London Centre for Book Arts Opens This Weekend

This weekend heralds the grand opening of the London Centre for Book Arts, the UK's first dedicated open-access educational book arts center. Akin to New York's Center for Book Arts, which was founded in 1974 by Richard Minsky (also our Book Arts columnist), the LCBA is offering classes and workshops in papermaking, letterpress printing, and bookbinding.

The decision to open the LCBA occurred to recent London College of Communication graduate Simon Goode during a three-month trip to the U.S. He was inspired by visiting several book arts institutions in the states and then struck by the fact that no such place existed in London. "I soon found out there was nowhere for me to use all these bits of specialised equipment that I'd learned. I spent three years learning all these bookbinding and printmaking techniques, it was amazing and I had a brilliant time and I wanted to carry on, but there was simply no access," he told The Guardian last month.

Goode has equipped the new space in Fish Island, Hackney, with a Victorian guillotine once owned by poet Ted Hughes and an 1897 wooden press. A schedule of classes is up on the LCBA's Facebook page.

Image via LCBA.