Conference 2026: Speakers, Traders, Competition and a Special Visit

Kate Holland

Journey from Brain to Board 

An illustrated talk examining how someone with little artistic background tries to carve a path from initially reading the book to articulating a personal response, coming up with a semblance of a design, exploring which of the myriad different decorative techniques are the most suitable to realise said design, probably then needing to work out new decorative techniques because the existing ones do not suffice and then trying to wrangle it all into a cohesive whole.

Suzanne Schmollgruber 

Articulated: Architecture in Motion 

Suzanne will share the story behind her book Articulated — Architecture in Motion: an exploration of movable elements, windows, modular pages, hinges, joints, and articulations of all kinds, inspired by architectural structures and built through countless experiments in making rigid card soft, flexible, and playful.

Dominic Riley 

The Tudor Style 

A demonstration of the technique originally devised by Paul Delrue: layering leather pieces across the boards of a binding — a clever and economical way of using spare leather.

Gillian Stewart 

Magnet Closures for Boxes 

A demonstration of two processes for using magnets as box closures. Magnets offer a neat, secure and very satisfying way to create an invisible closure on boxes. During this demo Gillian will share some tips and tricks for successful and tidy use of magnets.

Glenn Bartley

New Miniature Bindings for the Centenary of Queen Mary's Dolls' House

An illustrated lecture on the creation of the new miniature bindings commissioned to mark the 2024 Centenary of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. The talk will explore the historical significance of this world-famous dolls’ house and the original 1920s library before outlining the vision for the centenary project. Glenn will describe the planning and execution involved to produce 21 unique miniature design bindings, the challenges of working at doll house scale, collaborating with the authors and binders and exhibiting the books at Windsor Castle. (This lecture supports our new competition category for miniature bindings).  

Ann-Marie Miller and Emma Wright

A Legacy of Letters: Conserving a Family Archive for the National Trust

Townend, in the Troutbeck Valley, is a National Trust property in the Lake District. For over 4 centuries it was the home of the Brownes, an ordinary farming family with more than 400 years of extraordinary stories. A major feature of the house is its library, which contains the family’s well-used book collection. Several of these volumes were bound by George Browne (1834—1914), an enthusiastic bookbinder and wood carver. 

George Browne took particular interest in the correspondence of his seventeenth and eighteenth-century ancestors compiling 16 volumes of their letters which are now held at the Kendal Archive Centre. It the conservation of 4 of these volumes that we will be focussing on, looking at the construction and repair of these historic bindings. How can we balance a need to safely access the letters with the intentions of the binder? The letters themselves present their own problems with vulnerable wax seals and various degrees of degradation. From soft, crumbling paper ravaged by mould to delicate doilies created by book worm. Balancing all these factors made their conservation a unique challenge. We will delve into this, discussing both how to practically repair such diverse materials and how to preserve their historicity.