What is the Guild of Book Workers and what is Standards?
A few months ago I was able to attend to my first Standards seminar. But before I get into details, let me talk about the Guild de Book Workers (who organize Standards each year) and Standards Seminar itself.
The Guild of Book Workers is an association of book workers mostly located in the USA and Canada. It was founded in 1906 to maintain a camaraderie relationship between book workers, and among the first members are, we can find, Edith Diehl (author of Bookbinding, its Background and Technique) wikipedia link and Frederic W Goudy (typography designer, who designed: Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley).
As we know, bookbinding and the book arts can be lonely activities, you usually work many hours in your studio without having partners to go over notes or make comments with. The Guild then appears to fill that void.
Within its values is the responsibility of maintaining and supporting the development of design books or artist books. Its members want their work to be exposed more and more to the public in order to continue receiving commissions, as well as to advance in the investigation of the conservation and restoration of this type of books.
It is important to mention that the members of the board of directors carry out their work as volunteers, that is how committed they are to their career and passion.
Now that we are more clear about what the Guild of Book workers is, I would like to talk to you about Standards.
El nombre completo es Standards of Excellence Seminar en Hand Bookbiding, que quiere decir se trata de un seminario de estándares de excelencia en la encuadernación hecha a mano. Es realizado cada año en diferentes ciudades de Estados Unidos dónde se llevan a cabo conferencias lideradas por expertos en el rubro del libro y el arte en papel.
Además, siempre se buscan ciudades que tengan un poco de historia en temas de encuadernación o similar para poder organizar eventos en paralelo que sean complementarios. Por ejemplo, podrían ser tours a talleres de encuadernación, a bibliotecas con colecciones especiales o museos sobre papel o libros.
Y cómo última pieza clave, vienen expositores de diferentes insumos para encuadernadores a ofrecer sus materiales durante la duración del evento. Por ejemplo se pueden comprar cueros, libros especializados, papeles decorados, hilos de lino y herramientas para dorado. Como puedes imaginarte es una experiencia increíble para quien está interesado en este tema.
¿Qué crees que te llamaría más de Standards? ¿Las conferencias, la venta de materiales o los tours?
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