City Lit bookbinding provides a comprehensive range of traditional and contemporary taught and workshop-based courses at all levels from beginner to advanced. Students studying on our courses can develop skills in traditional bookbinding, gold tooling, paper marbling, historic and experimental book structures and contemporary fine binding.
Students interested in book arts can explore both classic and innovative techniques and structures to produce unique books and editions. For students who wish to study conservation and repair, we have classes covering paper repair, the conservation and repair of cloth, leather and vellum books, hand tooling and machine blocking.
We run evening, daytime and weekend classes in our purpose-built studio that is well equipped with presses, guillotines, and hand tools and our courses are taught by tutors, who are skilled practitioners, industry specialists and experts in the fields of bookbinding, book arts, fine design binding, conservation and repair.
Browse our range of bookbinding courses in London below to choose your perfect option.
Ideal if you have some bookbinding conservation experience and want to develop your skills further by working on your own projects with advice and guidance. Each term will include demonstrations that focus on a different aspect of book conservation.
A stub binding is an excellent way to bind books that cannot be rounded and backed, or which have illustrations that cross the centre fold. Stubs can also be used to bind individual pieces of paper into a book. A stub binding allows the pages of a book to open freely – right back to the centre-fold, and once learned, this technique can be used with many traditional and contemporary binding styles.
Learn about the cleaning, repair and conservation of paper in flat documents and in book format, and the repair and conservation of paper and cloth-bound books. For those with some bookbinding experience.
Learn to assess books and repair vellum-covered books including limp, semi-limp and boarded style. Work on your own projects in paper, cloth or leather. Basic materials included. For those with some bookbinding experience.