Bookbinding Workshop with CILIPS East Branch
Branch: East Branch | Category: Blog, Branches and Groups
by Julie Sutherland, Chair of CILIPS East Branch
We had a fantastic afternoon in Glasgow recently with DAD Bookbinders, where we had the amazing opportunity learning basic bookbinding skills to create a beautiful notebook and restore some of our well-loved and tatty books. DAD is a family run business, with a small, dedicated and highly skilled team. How could we resist an afternoon in their workshop?
Firstly, Karen showed us how to craft a small notebook, something more beautiful than the ‘schoolbooks’ I made for my teddy bears as a child, demonstrating how to stich pages together, add a cover and trim the edges to counter the inevitable ‘creep’. Meanwhile, John perused our offerings and when our notebooks were drying, he gave us advice on which of our well-loved books could be brought back to life and how.
You can imagine the trepidation as we held scalpels for the first time and were instructed to carefully take apart the damaged sections of our books. However, as the afternoon progressed, so did our confidence and we felt able to tackle similar repairs once back at work. Some of our books had spine damage, or were completely removed from their covers, others had pages that had fallen out. Some of our offerings were recently published and others were far older and precious, taken from a special collection.
Most of our books needed new covers and/or spines, end sheets and flyleaves. I have to admit to getting a bit giddy when I was shown the selection of beautiful book covers and papers that we could choose from. The colours! The patterns! Oh my! Once the cover had been created some of our books were able to have lettering stamped along the spine, before the end sheets were glued in place and our books were placed in a machine to create the crease on either side of the spine. Our much loved and tatty books had been transformed and now looked amazing.
John, Karen and Robin could not have been more helpful or courteous to our barrage of questions about book repairs. Everyone was buzzing with their new skills and confidence, delighted with our books and ready to take those skills back to work. If you get an opportunity to take part in a future workshop (hint, hint, we are hoping to go back…) I would grab that opportunity with both hands! If you have any bookbinding queries, they would be delighted to hear from you…
Downie Allison Downie Ltd
https://www.dadbookbinders.com/
t: 0141 339 0333
