#ColorOurCollections 2016!

The craze for coloring books continues to grow! If you (or people you know, of any age) enjoy coloring, as I do, then you’re in for a real treat. This week, the New York Academy of Medicine is sponsoring a special collections coloring fest on social media!

Continue reading

Bound to be Held: A Book Show

Our neighbors at the Contemporary Jewish Museum have a book exhibit opening tomorrow. Celebrating the book as object, artist Josh Greene turns the gallery into a place where celebrities and private individuals present books that have been important to their lives, and shared readings take place over the run of

Continue reading

Bookbinding with the Girl Scouts

Recently the Bookbinders Museum was approached by local Girl Scout troop 33239 who were planning activities around their Book Artist badge. Librarian, Amelia Grounds, visited the troop and showed various aspects of bookbinding and book construction. Here, she recounts the day’s activities. I enjoy any opportunity to talk about bookbinding

Continue reading

Hand Bookbinders of California 43rd Members Exhibition

The American Bookbinders Museum is pleased announce that we will be hosting the Hand Bookbinders of California’s 43rd Annual Members’ Exhibition this summer from June 12 – September 13, 2015. This will be ABM’s first exhibition in our newly remodeled facility!  We hope, it will be the first of many

Continue reading

Answers to the ABM Bookbinding Tools Trivia Contest!

The American Bookbinders Museum was thrilled to participate in the Antiquarian Book Fair in Oakland last weekend. We met so many lovely people, and were excited for the opportunity to talk about the museum and bookbinding with such a wide audience. Our bookbinding tools trivia contest was a hit both

Continue reading

ABM at California International Antiquarian Book Fair!

In case you hadn’t already heard, the American Bookbinders Museum is excited to announce that we will be attending the California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Oakland February 6-8! We will have a selection of early bookbinding manuals on display as well as bookbinding tools and equipment. To get you

Continue reading

The Future of Book Restoration

A DYING CRAFT? For The Love of Old Books – And People Who Restore Them A dispatch from England by Dominic Riley Something to Think About In his book the Globalization of Nothing, George Ritzer, pioneer in the sociology of consumption, defines ‘nothing’ as anything that is centrally conceived and

Continue reading

Bookbinding Technique of the Month: Sewing Over Tapes with a French Knot

It seems to me an interest in bookbinding is an interest that goes beyond the love of books and the act of reading: it’s really a preoccupation with how things come to be, an origin story for an object so ubiquitous we forget it had to be sewn and stitched

Continue reading

From the Librarian’s Desk | All the King’s Horses

     Quite a lot of my work day at the moment is consumed with planning and big picture issues regarding setting up the library collections and safeguarding it for the future.  One part of that is the cataloging of the library collections.  There are two types of library cataloging: copy and

Continue reading

Cleaning and Cataloguing the Pen Ruling Machine

This past Friday was Chronicle Books’ annual volunteer day.  While the majority of the company spent the day helping out at the San Francisco Zoo, my two stellar colleagues Neil and Ben joined me here at the Museum to assist archivist Jae Mauthe and Founder Tim James in cleaning, cataloguing

Continue reading