Teaching

DB/SoB Joint Weekend Workshops

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Edge Decoration

Tutor: Dominic Riley
Dates: 15-16 October 2011
Times: 10.00am - 5.00pm
Venue: Ulverston, Cumbria
Fee: GBP125.00 (plus GBP30.00 materials payable on the day)

Every surface of the book is a canvas for decoration, and this includes the edges of the pages. This workshop will cover several methods of edge decoration which have been used throughout the ages in both traditional and creative binding styles, from the very simple to the advanced.

We will start with a few traditional ‘trade’ methods – the solid colour wash, often used on prayer books and cheaper bindings; the ‘newspaper sprinkle’, a very fast and easy method for large bound collections; the wash and sprinkle, used historically on inexpensive leather and vellum bindings; and the sprinkled and burnished edge, common on ‘ordinary’ leather bindings in the eighteenth century.

Next we do the very handsome graphite edge, common to German and Scandinavian millimetre binding, which gives a beautiful dark and shiny finish. We will end up with the contemporary and very artistic ‘painted edge’, seen nowadays on many Design Bindings, which allows for complex layering of colouring and shapes which enhance the overall design of the binding.

This workshop is suitable for binders of all levels. Dominic will provide a set of books, rounded and backed, to decorate, with covers made up for casing in at home.

Dominic Riley studied at the London College of Printing and has worked in London, New York and San Francisco, where he founded the bindery at the Center for the Book. He has his bindery with Michael Burke in Cumbria, teaches in the USA and across the UK, and is an accredited lecturer with NADFAS. In 2007 he won both first prizes and the Mansfield medal in the Designer Bookbinders competition and was elected a Fellow of DB in 2008. In 2009 he travelled to Brazil to teach for the bookbinding group ABER. He is Vice Chairman of SoB.