We offer workshops in traditional and non-traditional book arts, letterpress printing, and the conservation of paper and books—all taught by expert instructors.

Please click on the seasonal menu on the right in order to view a list of the workshops. Then click on any workshop title to go to its description.

Housing During July

You will notice that we are offering a concentration of workshops during July. Part of our motivation to do so is that we have arranged to offer you the option of housing, breakfast, and dinner at Williston Northampton School, just two blocks from the studio. This fine prep school has offered us use of a new residential building that was constructed as an addition to a Victorian home. Please look for details on our dorm lodging web page.

2010 Workshops

Daniel Kelm will open our spring season when he teaches Concertina Spine Sewn on Tapes. This workshop is a good opportunity to explore many of the issues essential to creating a successful structure. For example, more important than its strong design impact, the tapes serve structural purposes. They help snug the spine together into a compact form. The tape has an integrating function—both providing an element around which you sew and serving to connect the cover boards to the spine. While the concertina stabilizes the binding head to tail and spine to fore edge, the tapes stabilize the structure from cover board to cover board. Come learn this versatile, useful, and attractive structure!

If you are looking for an opportunity to explore the process of developing content, please join us for Nancy Leavitt’s workshop: In Search of Content. We are very pleased to welcome Nancy to GAS for the first time. Let this accomplished book artist lead you from your (dis)comfort zone—whatever the case may be!—to a supportive, instructive, and playful environment crafted to help you understand the concept of content and the way that text can inform and inspire a design.

Art Larson is offering Letterpress Broadsides in his beautiful studio in Hadley. Come spend two days setting and printing a broadside of your own design! You will produce a small edition—copies to be shared with your fellow students.

Our July concentration of workshops starts off with a bang: The Leather Intensive with Daniel Kelm. During this six-day rich, learning experience each participant will make a full-leather binding using techniques traditional to English and French construction.

Close on Daniel’s heals, we welcome Julie Chen back when she offers—for the first time anywhere—a five-day workshop: The Secrets of the Magic Tablet. Part book, part optical paper toy, the tablet structure presents the opportunity to create mesmerizing illusions. This workshop will be an enjoyable blend of creative expression and the learning and execution of a precise structure.

Next comes a weekend of Leather Onlay & Inlay with Daniel Kelm. These traditional techniques for design remain very popular since lettering can be created as well as abstract and figurative images.

Then, we are very pleased to present three two-day workshops with a historical bent. (1) Julia Miller will return to GAS to teach The Glazier Codex, a 5th century Coptic binding. (Julia’s Nag Hammadi Codices workshop was a great success two years ago. We expect this to be equally popular.) (2) Martin Antonetti and Smith College are offering you another opportunity to spend two days in the rare book room studying The History of the Book for Book Artists. (3) Last but not least—and for the first time anywhere—Pam Spitzmueller will offer Coptic Cover Decoration. You can expect to learn techniques such as stitched leather tracery backed with contrasting colored leather or gilded parchment; cold tooling with small tools building up larger designs or friezes; lacing of parchment ribbons in straight and curved borders; multi-line panels or borders; and built-up line patterns that form intricate stars or interlaced crosses. We’ve clustered these workshops together in case you out-of-towners want to take more than one.

We are very pleased to welcome Shawn Sheehy to GAS for the first time. He will help you bring exciting dimension to the page when he teaches Animated Pop-Up Structures. In this three-day class, you will learn the fundamentals for building both pop-up and moveable structures.

Eric Alstrom will wind up our July concentration of workshops when he returns to teach Board Reattachment Using Japanese Papers. Both tightback and hollowback volumes can be treated using just pennies’ worth of paper in a fraction of the time it would take to lift the old leather, pare the new, and reattach the covers. These repairs are perfect for smaller volumes, but can be adapted for larger books, too.

What would a year of workshops at GAS be without something about boxes? Daniel Kelm will teach Box Design and Construction, providing you with an opportunity to learn step-jointed, laminated-wall box construction as well as to plan and build a mock-up of your own box project.

And if Vellum Binding Over Boards is an intriguing yet intimidating prospect, come get over the fear of working with this beautiful hygroscopic material by attending Peter Geraty’s two-day workshop.

Writing, illustration, book design, typesetting, printing, and bookbinding used to be separate, specialized professions. Today’s technology, however, makes many of these jobs approachable for an individual wishing to self-publish. For the first time anywhere, Linda Lembke is offering Chapbook Bindings for Writers for those folks who want to learn several book structures that lend themselves to books designed and printed on standard-sized papers with personal computer equipment. We can’t think of a better teacher to initiate this group so please tell all your writer friends about this opportunity. (We will have a gallery of images up soon, I hope.)

We hear a rumor that Suzanne Moore will return in October—details of her plans will be available later . . . stay tuned.

It’s a very special year when Linda Lembke graces our classroom more than once. By popular request, she will offer Exploring Paper. In this workshop, you will examine the physical properties of paper and play with its creative possibilities. Workshop activities are designed to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of paper, and to build awareness of its working properties and its potential in bookmaking.

And, Daniel Kelm will wind up the season when he offers a new wire edge workshop: Metal Binding Meets the Cover Carrier. Daniel is known for his innovative, wire edge bindings. This structure involves binding signatures of pages in metal covers with an intriguing and attractive rod and tube spine system.

We hope you will enjoy looking through our program, and that you’ll join us here in Massachusetts.

We look forward to seeing you here at the Garage.
—Greta D. Sibley, Co-director