Teaching

DB Lecture Series 2011-2012

Designers Bookbinders highly regarded and popular series of lectures will take place monthly through October to March (except December).

All lectures will be held at:

The Art Workers Guild, 6 Queen Square, London WC1
Nearest tube stations are Holborn and Russell Square.

Tuesday evening lectures start at 6.30pm
Saturday lectures start at 10.30am / 12 noon / 2.00pm / 3.30pm
All lectures will last approx. 1 hour.

Purchased singly on the day, per lecture admission will remain the same as before:
DB members £5; non-members £7; students £2.50

The cost of three Saturday lectures will be:
DB members £14; non-members £20; students £6.50

Further details from Mark Cockram:

Mark Cockram
T: 0208 563 2158
E: lectures@designerbookbinders.org.uk

Tuesday 4th October 2011
Mel Gooding
The Alphabet as Art: Peter Blake's & Other Arty Alphabets
A look at Peter Blake's Alphabets in the context of the Alphabet itself considered as a programme for Art (as opposed to its life in Literature, its natural habitat)

Tuesday 1st November 2011
Bruce Howard
Bound To Do Good: How a passion for books has been used to unite authors and artists around the world to help children made vulnerable by HIV/Aids. The world’s two billion children and adolescents are at the centre of the HIV/AIDS crisis. More than a third of all people living with HIV/AIDS are under the age of 25, and almost two-thirds of them are women. AIDS has orphaned 14 million children and left millions more extremely vulnerable. Almost 2,000 infants became HIV-positive every day last year. (Statistics from UNICEF)

Saturday 14th January 2012
10.30am: David Lanning
A Virtual Tour Through the Hewit Tannery and the Leather Manufacturing Process

12 noon: Mark Winstanley
From the Clerkenwell Village to the Highlands of Ethiopia
Mark will talk about the Wyvern Bindery and the Abba Garima Gospels. The lecture will cover a recap of our work, some of the more unusual bindings and lots of disaster stories. After this brief history, the lecture will move to Ethiopia. The Abba Garrima Gospels, written on vellum in the late 6th century are the oldest surviving manuscripts in Tigre. Beautifully illuminated, the colours are still of a breath-taking sharpness and clarity. Under Lestor Capon’s wise and knowing eye, this was a bookbinding experience of a lifetime, with thrills and spills worthy of Indiana Jones.

2.30pm: Rowan Watson
Bindings and Artists' Books in the National Art Library at the V&A: An Overview
The V&A has collected bindings since its inception in the 1850s. If it has been considered on occasion an eccentric collection, it has the advantage of showing a great variety of ways in which binders have worked. This talk will discuss some highlights of the collection, and comment on bindings given to artists’ books. Ways in which the repairs of historic bindings have been approached will also be considered.

Tuesday 7th February 2012
Glenn Bartley
A Retrospective
Glenn’s talk will explore his career, his feeling for the book and his work so far from his idea of creating a unified whole and the challenge of linking the past with the present. No doubt there will be passing references to motorbikes.

Tuesday 6th March 2012
Sara Mazzarino
Exploring Vellum Binding: Their Structural Characteristics and Their Applications in Modern Conservation Practice
This lecture will examine different styles of historical and modern vellum bindings, focusing particularly on the strengths and weaknesses of their structural characteristics. This analysis will be the basis to better understand the possible applications of such binding styles in modern conservation practice.