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Private workshop INVITATION ONLY
March 26-30, 2026 | Five all-day, in-person sessions.
9:30 am-5:30 pm instruction, with open studio until 7:30 pm
Pare leather for and cover the two book blocks made in the fall 2025 Binding Fundamentals workshop
A partial list of required tools: Scharfix, spokeshave, paring knife + strop.
Workshop fee includes includes goatskin for covering, and materials for drawsheets and compensation cards.
This workshop requires a paring knife, spokeshave, and a Scharfix or Brockman paring machine.
This is an in-person workshop. Details on travel, lodging, and working in the studio in FAQs
Ethiopian Binding IN-PERSON workshop. Chicago area.
November 12-13, 2025 | Two all-day, in-person sessions.
9:30 am-5:30 pm
Registration deadline October 30.
Two spaces remaining.
The Ethiopian binding structure may have emerged as early as the fourth century and has been in use unchanged for centuries. This humble, elegant binding opens flat and is the inspiration for many contemporary “Coptic” book arts structures. Characteristics include wood boards trimmed flush with the text block, paired sewing stations, and chain stitch-sewing that enters the board edge to incorporate board attachment. Historically the text blocks were made of parchment. Any covering would be done with goatskin. If the boards were to be left uncovered, no endband was added. If the boards were partially or fully covered in leather, braided leather endbands were sewn on after covering.
In this workshop, students will make a full-leather binding with braided leather endbands and cloth board linings. We will begin by folding and punching sections, and drilling holes into wood boards. Simple tooling will enhance the finished binding.
This workshop requires a Dremel or drill and a 1/4" chisel.
This is a fast-paced intermediate-level workshop. Prerequisites: Binding Fundamentals or equivalent. Students should be making sewn books independently, outside a workshop setting.
This is an in-person workshop. Details on travel, lodging, and working in the studio in FAQs
Fishing in Canada. Montreal: Canadian National Railways, ca 1930.
Aspects of exposed structure are part of the aesthetic of this Even More Simplified binding. Boards covered in coho salmon parchment processed by the binder and dyed in indigo, pomegranate and cochineal. Parchment backed with Roma handmade paper, some visible on the rear board. Goatskin spine wrapper laced on with linen sewing cords made by the binder. Attachment of parchment to the boards is reinforced with salmon parchment tackets, these and the endcaps are painted with shell gold. Hahnemühle Ingres endpapers with Roma flexi flyleaves and pastedowns. Rolled leather endbands. Hand titled in 22 kt gold foil. Bound 2025.
8 3/16 x 5 x 7/8”
20.7 x 12.7 x 2.3 cm
Book was a garage sale find, a gift from a colleague missing the original cover, which was scanned and printed from a similar edition. A 1923 edition of the missing map was located online, printed on handmade Akbar paper, and sewn in on a guard. Map courtesy of the University of British Columbia Library Digitization Centre and its generous donors. <http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0343188>