Standards of Excellence: San Francisco October 29-31

Every year bookbinders from across the country meet for a weekend of lectures, demonstrations, and purchasing fun!

The location of the show varies from year to year, and from coast to coast. This year the show happened to take place in in San Francisco, and thus, was extremely well attended.

The Guild of Bookworkers currently has a traveling exhibition of works called Marking Time. The exhibit was on show in the San Francisco Public Library during our visit, which was great to have the opportunity to see the show first-hand.

In any case, if the show is not traveling to wherever it is you reside, I would highly recommend checking out some of the works on the online gallery (linked above). Not only are they all exquisitely crafted, they are also all very inspiring & intriguing works of art.

 

The image on the left was taken during the opening reception at the library after the first afternoon of lectures, and the opening of the vendor hall.
The picture on the right is a snapshot from the counter show that the conservators for the library put up called Masking Time. It was an interesting juxtaposition to the Guild’s show, and showcased a lot of the conservation techniques employed when restoring works from the collection. This case demonstrated a small array of tools used in the conservation process. But we particularly liked this section as it showcased our TALAS monographed conservation glue brush!The show continued throughout all of Friday and concluded late in the afternoon on Saturday.This is a shot taken from inside of vendor hall & location of the lectures as well, conveniently located in the are of Japantown towards the center of the city.Here you can see a bit of our set-up, complete with items from parchments & leathers, to bookbinding tools, to papers, to books, etc.!Everyone, not so surprisingly, seemed to particularly flock to our Boutique Tools & Casselli Spatulas.

 

Some of the vendors (including ourselves) decided to have a little fun being that it was Halloween and all!

Englishmen aren’t always so proper. Case and point, the image to the left, our friends and colleagues from overseas in London. This is Will & Rob from Shepherds Bookbinders; this duo is always good fun!
To the right are the 2009 TALAS reps at the Guild, Jill & Aaron. Dressed, of course, as bookworms!

We are certainly looking forward to next years show already!

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