Dominic’s design bindings are known for their use of color, playfulness and experimentation. This class will introduce you to a range of techniques he uses in his creative work, including both innovative leather work and free-from gold tooling.

Leather techniques will include raised onlays, back-pared onlays, feathered onlays, inlays, decorative sanded onlays, impressed leather techniques and overlapping leather onlays. Dominic will guide you through the process of incorporating all these techniques onto a finished binding.

Our leather work will be further embellished with gold, using Dominic’s adapted tool which allows for a free-form approach to design. We will make our own tool from a piece of brass sunk into a wooden handle. We’ll then create a design and learn how to transfer it to the leather using ingenious gigs and templates, which ensure accuracy as the completed design takes shape.

This class is a feast of creative and technical tips for anyone wanting to expand their skills into more advanced areas of creative leather binding.

Dominic has created over sixty design bindings so far and these have won him over twenty awards in that time, including both first prizes and the Mansfield medal in the DB competition in 2007, and first prize in the International Competition in 2013. 

Materials to bring: Materials list will be emailed to students

Recommended: Bookbinding Core 1-4 (click here to learn more about the Bookbinding Core)

Date & Time: Monday-Friday, June 22-26, 2015 :: 9:30am-5:30pm

Workshop + Materials Fee: $700

Please review the SF Center for the Book Registration Policies before signing up for a class

About the Instructor | Dominic Riley

Dominic Riley learned bookbinding at age 16 from Benedictine monks and at the London College of Printing. He spent the last 10 years in San Francisco teaching, lecturing and restoring rare books. He now has a bindery with Michael Burke in England's Lake District and serves as vice chairman of the Society of Bookbinders.

He also recently won the top award of £10,000 ($15,670.89) at the second Sir Paul Getty Bodleian Bookbinding Prize 2013 ceremony.The BBC filed the following report. To view the original article click here.

Past Student Reviews:

“Dominic is a masterful teacher. Very good with ALL students”

“Superb! Set the time frame very well so we could all complete work. Very helpful to slow learners!”

“Instructor was amazing- knowledge of technique, history, and personal anecdotes was informative and interesting”

"Dominic's classes are always worth attending. You learn about the history as well as the binding you are studying"