The Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center presents the Hand Bookbinders of California's Annual Members’ Exhibition, to celebrate the group’s forty-fourth year. The exhibition opens on Saturday, June 18th,
at 2pm, at the San Francisco Public Library’s Skylight Gallery, Sixth
Floor, Main Library. The exhibition continues through September 3rd. There will be two docent-led tours of the exhibition on Thursday, June 23rd and Thursday, July 7th at 10 a.m.
The Hand Bookbinders of California
On March 17, 1972 the
Hand Bookbinders of California was established at an informal meeting in the
Washington Street home of Mr. Gale Herrick. Officers named were Mr. Herrick,
President; Miss Sheila Casey, Secretary-Treasurer; and Mrs. Peter Fahey,
Membership Committee Chairman.
The Hand Bookbinders
of California have organized exhibitions of members’ work ever since. The
first, which opened in November 1973, featured 50 books, which were displayed
in the front windows of John Howell Books at 434 Post Street, near Union
Square. The annual exhibits continued to be hosted by Howell’s over the next
ten years (except for a break in 1977) when this revered book shop closed its
doors. HBC has organized other shows, most notably the major international
exhibition Hand Bookbinding Today, An
International Art, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
in March 1978 and was documented in a catalog designed by Jack Stauffacher.
The annual members’ exhibitions
have been hosted by various institutions since the mid-1980s and have been a
regular feature at the San Francisco Public Library for many years. This year’s
exhibition includes the work of over forty members and presents a wide variety
of both traditional and innovative approaches to the concept, structure, and
construction of the book. The objects
range in size from miniscule to mammoth, from gold-tooled leather bindings to
artist’s books which redefine the notion of a “book.”
The Hand Bookbinders
of California (HBC) was founded by Bay Area bookbinders and collectors to
provide a forum in which to share and promote their interest in books and
bookbinding. For forty-four years, the
group has created a venue for the exchange of ideas and techniques, fostered
public appreciation of the art of design binding, exhibited the work of its
members, and encouraged students in order to keep alive a Bay Area tradition of
fine binding which dates to the nineteenth century. The group now includes nearly 200 book lovers
and artists from all over the country and its scope has expanded to include
professionals, amateurs, and students of conservation, box making, fine
printing, artist’s books, papermaking and decoration, calligraphy, printmaking,
and writing. Membership in the Hand
Bookbinders of California is open to anyone. They meet monthly, sponsor
bookbinding workshops and classes, and publish The Gold Leaf, a biannual
journal.
Before the HBC: The
Bookbinders Guild of California
Traditional book arts
flourished in late nineteenth-century San Francisco, where the printing
industry had long been especially vigorous. In early 1902, the Bookbinders
Guild of California was established by booksellers Morgan Shepard and Paul
Elder. Early members included Phoebe Hearst, Octavia Holden, Lucinda Butler,
and Rosa Taussig. Seventy-two members of the Guild exhibited in the windows of
the Elder and Shepard Bookshop in their first members’ exhibit later that year.
That show featured work by Douglas Cockerell, Roger de Coverly, and T.J. Cobden
Sanderson. The Bookbinders' Guild of California disappeared sometime before the
1906 earthquake and fire. When San Francisco bookbinders regrouped around 1908,
it was as the California Members of the New York-based Guild of Book
Workers.
With the founding of
the Book Club of California in 1912, the arts of fine printing and fine
binding, already encouraged and supported by many, were now institutionally and
formally recognized. Belle McMurty Young, one of the founding members of the
Book Club, was an active teacher of hand bookbinding. She had learned the craft
from Octavia Holden, a founding member of the Bookbinders' Guild of California.
A second organization of
San Francisco binders, now named the California
Bookbinders' Guild, was established around 1927, again with Octavia Holden as
the key figure. The group hosted its fifth annual members’ exhibition in 1933
but then disappeared from the record. The major international bookbinding
exhibition, at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939, was entitled Fine Bookbindings Exhibited at the Golden
Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, was organized by Peter Fahey
without a sponsoring bookbinders’ organization.
The Tradition
Today, several generations
later, the Hand Bookbinders of California carry on this venerated tradition, passing
on the craft, one teacher and one student at a time. The San Francisco Public
Library is pleased to partner with the Hand Bookbinders of California. We honor
the collecting of, caring for, and making of books. And together, we pay
tribute to this extraordinary lineage of practitioners of the traditional book
arts.
Many thanks to Tom Conroy for his research assistance.
Images from Marmerpapier by Geert Van Daal, (1980). Grabhorn Collection, San Francisco Public Library
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