Sometimes an old dog can learn some new tricks.

The Guild of Book Workers is over 100 years old and is still changing with the
times. We've updated our website, are on Facebook and Twitter, and now are glad
to include a blog of bookbinding and the book arts to our activities. Come see
what our members are doing, what's new in the field, and hear about
opportunities for you to participate in.

We've started with a description of the new 2009 GBW Journal, just arriving in
members' mailboxes this week. We'll be posting often so keep checking back and
feel free to comment, we'd love to hear from you as well.

Find the blog on our website at http://www.guildofbookworkers.org/_wp/

Best,
Andrew Huot, President-Elect
Guild of Book Workers

GBW Potomac Chapter Lecture

Lost on the Titanic
The Making of the Great Omar

A lecture by Dominic Riley

The Great Omar was the most fabulous, elaborate and opulent binding ever created. It was embellished with over one thousand jewels, five thousand leather onlays and a hundred square feet of gold leaf, and took a team of craftsmen over two and a half years to make. It went down with the Titanic. This lecture tells the story of the making of the fabulous Great Omar. It is also the story of the renowned bookbinding firm of Sangorski and Sutcliffe - who were known for their elaborate jeweled bindings - and the men that made this extraordinary book. It also tells the moving story of life after the tragedy, and of one young man in particular, who decided against the odds to recreate the binding, a venture which itself is mired in tragedy and which occupied him for the rest of his life.

Date: November 5th
Time: Wine and snacks @ 5:30pm; talk will start @6:00 p.m.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library, Board Room, 210 E Capitol St, SE, Washington, DC 20003
Fee: $ 5.00
Please rsvp to gbwpotomacchapter@gmail.com

Dominic Riley

Dominic is a bookbinder, teacher and filmmaker. He first learned bookbinding at age 16 from Benedictine Monks and later at the London College of Printing. He has worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and for various binderies in London, New York and San Francisco, and spends part of the year teaching across the USA. He has his bindery in the Lake District, from where he travels across the UK teaching master classes and lecturing.

Dominic is an accredited lecturer with the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies.
Dominic is Vice Chairman of the Society of Bookbinders and was elected a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders in 2008. His binding work is mostly the restoration of antiquarian books, and Design Bindings. He has won many prizes in the Designer Bookbinders competition, including both first prizes and the Mansfield Medal in 2007. His bindings are in many private and public collections, including the British Library, the University of Wales and the John Rylands Library in Manchester.

His first full length film, Seventy Years In Bookbinding, about Bernard Middleton, was released in 2008; his latest film is about the life and work of Maureen Duke, a well loved teacher and pioneer of restoration.

GBW Potomac Chapter Workshop

Pastepapers Old and New
Two Day Class

Michael Burke

Explore the joys of making your own historical decorated papers, then experiment with contemporary designs and inventive techniques. Although known from around 1650, pastepapers were made popular in the mid 1700s by the Moravian Sisters of Herrnhut in Saxony. Recent study of these papers has sparked a revival of interest in them, and in this workshop Michael will introduce you to the methods, materials and patterns used on the original pastepapers.

We will begin by mixing the colors using natural earth pigments, and making the few simple tools used by the Sisters. We will then reproduce each of their original designs using the same colors, patterns, freehand brush strokes and tooling. Part two of the class will bring us up to date with a wide range of inventive techniques for making modern pastepapers. Michael will show you how to make combs, stamps, rollers and other mark-making tools used in pastepaper design, and show a range of techniques he uses to create many different effects, from the simple pulled papers, to the highly regular striped patterns.

Date: November 6th and 7th, 2010
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Location: Folger Shakespeare Library, Werner Gundersheimer Conservation Laboratory, 201 E Capitol St, SE, Washington, DC 20003
Members: $ 200.00 Non-members: $ 250.00
Please register at gbwpotomacchapter@gmail.com and save your spot!

Michael Burke

Michael started his working life as a chemist researching the transformation of coal into oil. He later worked in occupational health with asbestos. Michael studied bookbinding with Dominic Riley and paper conservation with Karen Zukor. He was involved in establishing the bindery at the San Francisco Center for the Book, and edited Gold Leaf, the journal of the Hand Bookbinders of California.

Michael lives in the Lake District, England, where he teaches bookbinding at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal and at Society of Bookbinders events across the UK. He has taught for diverse book arts groups across the USA, including Los Angeles, Seattle and Salt Lake City and in 2007 he taught a pastepaper workshop at Paper and Book Intensive in Michigan. Last year he traveled to São Paulo to teach for the Brazilian group ABER. In recent years Michael has been researching the structures of ancient and medieval bindings, and decorative papers.
Michael is currently studying for an MA in the History of the Book, at the University of London. He is presenting Byzantine Bookbinding at this year’s Guild of Bookworkers’, Standards of Excellence Seminar.