Introduction to Bookbinding

Make books by hand: discover creative structures and binding techniques for creating your own books. Explore how books can become expressive works of art while experimenting with paper, textiles, and surface design. Draw inspiration from color, composition, and design across the museum’s collection as you create a unique series of handcrafted books that reflect your personal interests and creative voice.

• Week 1: Get oriented in the language of the book. Discuss folds, signatures, spines, and grain, and make a simple, single-sheet structures to understand how paper becomes a book before any stitching is involved. Visit the museum’s collection for inspiration, looking at color, composition, and design across different works and thinking about how those same choices might shape your own covers.
• Week 2: Learn the pamphlet stitch (the most simple and forgiving binding there is), and make a few small books to get the needle and thread feeling natural in your hands.
• Week 3: Move into Japanese stab binding, learning the rhythm of the stitch and how it changes what a book can hold. Start thinking about covers as their own design question: what material, weight, and texture might hold and protect the book, and how can the cover set a tone before anyone opens it?
• Week 4: Construct an accordion-fold book (or concertina) to use as a watercolor sketchbook, working with paper suited to wet media so the finished piece is functional as well as expressive. Explore how the accordion structure changes the way images and pages relate to each other.
• Week 5: Design and construct a cover for a travel journal, working to build a structure that can hold multiple inserts and expand over time. Focus on how the elastic or cord closure will work and how the cover needs to flex and wear well with use.
• Week 6: Make several inserts for your travel journal, choosing different papers. Bind the inserts using a pamphlet stitch or saddle stitch, and finish by assembling everything into your journal cover. We’ll share our finished books and reflect on how artistic choices shaped a set of very different, very personal objects.

This is an introductory-level Studio Class; it is designed to accommodate all levels of skill and talent. If you have never taken an art making class before, this is a great place to start. You will learn new skills that you can use in your artistic practice.

Please note that in the event of a session being canceled, November 19 is reserved as a makeup date.

Expand your art-making skills through guided, step-by-step instruction with expert instructor. Over multiple weeks, you will learn alongside other creative adults and delve deeply into the artistic process, explore new techniques, and build your practice.  

The registration fee includes all materials, weekly access to world-class art in the museum’s galleries, hours of expert instruction, and access to a Friday afternoon Open Studio during the run of the class.