September to December 2025
Events run from 10:30 - 15:30 unless otherwise stated at the Congregational Chapel, Kelly Street, Kentish Town, NW1 8PH. The pedestrian entrance is between 34 & 36 Kelly Street and there is limited car parking at the rear of the building on Church Avenue, off Kentish Town Road near the corner with Prince of Wales Road. If you plan to bring a car, we recommend that you check if London Congestion Charges apply.
Tea and coffee are available throughout the day and there are local cafés and sandwich shops within a few minutes walk. There is a lift which can be used when an event is being held in the 1st floor hall.
Demonstrations and talks are £20 for members and £40 for non-members.
Workshops are £50 for members and £75 for non-members. If applicable, materials are an extra charge. We ask that you pay this along with your fee so that we can then transfer this to the instructor with their payment for the workshop.
Visits are £25.
Please contact Talitha Wachtelborn [email protected] with any questions.
Bookings for London & South Events
- The closing date for bookings is 22 August 2025. Please fill in the form by this date. We recommend that you make a note of your preferences to avoid double booking, cancellations, and unnecessary extra work for our volunteers.
- For workshops with limited places we may need to operate a lottery system to allocate spots fairly.
- You will be notified of any places that you successfully obtain after the date listed above and will then be asked for payment.
- Zoom event log-in details will be sent after places have been allocated.
- Payment is by bank transfer. Bank details will be sent along with the notice of a successful place. Please pay promptly when notified you have a place or it may be passed along to the next person on the waitlist. This is to ensure full attendance and benefit for the highest number of members.
- Refunds are not available 2 weeks before an event as we may not be able to fill the place.
18 September 2025 - Visit (London): Linnean Society
Time: 14:00
Location: Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BF
Description:
The Linnean Society of London is the world’s oldest learned society devoted to biology and natural history, and the birthplace of the theory of evolution. On this tour, we will explore the Society’s magnificent premises at Burlington House in the heart of Mayfair, learn about the history of this remarkable institution and the countless treasures it holds.
The tour will include a visit to the Society’s bombproof collections store, where the priceless book, archive and biological specimen collections of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus are housed in environmentally-controlled conditions beneath the teeming shoppers of Piccadilly.
One of the most important venues in the history of science, a tour of the Linnean Society offers a glimpse of one of London’s true treasures.
14 October 2025 - Visit: Institute of Naval Medicine Library, Gosport (near Portsmouth)
Time: 13:30
Teacher: Shaun Thompson
Location: Alverstoke, Gosport, Hants, PO12 2D
Description:
"The library of the present collection comprises the pre-1900 stock, with additions to 1948, of both Haslar and Stonehouse. Having been the working collection for 19th-century naval surgeons, it now gives an overview of what those surgeons would have studied. The Royal Hospital Haslar took its first patients in 1753, and the library and museum were added in 1827: the initial book-stock cost £400, with £150 per annum allowed thereafter. Royal Naval Hospital Stonehouse at Plymouth was completed in 1762, and a library added in 1832: £700 was allocated in 1834 to fit out the museum and library, plus £200 for books. Thereafter £100 per annum was allowed to buy books and specimens.
Please note: Institute of Naval Medicine Library in Gosport (near Portsmouth) would require a train or car journey. There is unlikely to be parking within the Institute due to security but there is on street parking in the vicinity. They can only offer on-site parking to those requesting it who hold a Blue Badge, and this needs to be arranged in advance. The local residential roads usually have plenty of spaces during the day. It is a 40 min walk from the Gosport Ferry to INM if someone came by train to Portsmouth Harbour. Taxis are available. Unfortunately, there is no direct bus.
Cost: £25
Max number of attendees: 10 max
20 and 27 September 2025 - Online Workshop: Exotic and Fun Storage Books Workshop
Time: 15:00-18:00 GMT (10:00-13:00 EST) over two Saturdays in September
Venue: held online (Zoom) - a link will be sent out before the event.
Instructor: Rosae Reader
Workshop description:
Combine form and function while creating these unique artist books! In this workshop, you will create storage books from unique folios of decorative paper. Learn how to make a multitude of single-page and multi-page elements that hide, tuck in, fold out and can be used individually as well as combined to make one storage book. You make the decision as to which unique elements will end up in your final book. Single-sheet folded books are not only beautiful and tactile works of art, but they offer an immersive and creative way to explore your personal skills and aesthetic. Join us for a fun afternoon of book making!
Please note: This workshop will be held on Zoom across two Saturday afternoons – a link will be sent out before the event.
A materials and tool list will be sent out to members ahead of time.
Cost: £50 for members, £75 for non-members
Maximum number of students: 12-15
Biography:
Rosae M. Reeder (she/her) is a Book Artist / Printmaker who lives, works and teaches in Philadelphia. Rosae holds an MFA from the Book Arts/Printmaking program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a BFA in Printmaking from The State University of New York at Buffalo. She has taught Book Arts and Letterpress at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the University of the Arts, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and other Institutions around the country. She has also taught numerous workshops for the Delaware Valley Guild of Book Workers. Her work combines various alternative photographic processes, digital collage, and traditional printmaking media such as letterpress, lithography and monotype, along with book structures. The imagery and content of her work is that of reference and reflection. A moment remembered, a time almost forgotten, a thought process evolved. Her work has been exhibited in many centers for the book and multiple galleries across the country and internationally.
27 September 2025 - Workshop: An Introduction to Tooling on Leather with Gold Leaf
Time: 11.00am till 4.00pm
Venue: Southern Book Crafts Club Bindery, Winnal Farm Industrial Estate, Easton Lane, Winchester. SO23 OHA
Please note: Car parking available on site. Venue is a twenty minute walk from Winchester Railway Station.
Instructor: Nick Collishaw
Workshop description:
Participants will work on supplied leather covered boards and dummy book spines using hand letters, type holders and decorative tools.
Cost: £50 for members, £75 for non-members; plus £25 for materials
Tool list will be provided in early Autumn 2025.
Max number of students: 8
Biography:
Nick completed a six year apprenticeship in 1968 after which he worked for several binderies in the UK and overseas. In 1978 he joined the staff of the Bookbinding Department of the London College of Printing where he became a Senior Lecturer and led a very successful team teaching craft bookbinding and book conservation on the full time two year H.N.D. course. He left the L.C.P. In 1996 to establish his own bindery with his wife Charlotte in Reigate, Surrey and continued to teach bookbinding part time at Morley College London until 2011.
Nick is the London and South region's present chairman, a role he held previously between 2004 and 2009. He is also President of the Southern Book Crafts Club.
18 October 2025 - Workshop: Magic Box
Venue: Ground floor hall, Kelly St., Kentish Town - ground floor hall requested
Instructor: Talitha Wachtelborn
Workshop description: Make a Jacob’s Ladder inspired box, perfect for gifts, jewellery, or any small trinkets you would like to store. A great way to use small scraps of precious papers.
Cost: £50 for members, £75 for non-members; plus £20 for materials
Tool list will be provided to participants in early Autumn 2025.
Max number of students: 10
Biography:
Talitha is the Sion College Conservator at Lambeth Palace Library. She studied at Camberwell and has previously worked at the Parliamentary Archives, Senate House Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
8 November 2025 - Demonstration: Gold Lettering and Layout
Venue: Ground floor hall, Kelly St., Kentish Town - ground floor hall requested
Speaker: Glenn Bartley
Description: Aimed at those with some experience of gold tooling techniques, this demonstration will explore the process for lettering both traditional and modern bindings with individual hand tools and type holders.
For many binders, the actual process of gold tooling is a difficult skill to acquire, and subsequently secondary emphasis is placed on the suitability of the typeface, size of tools and the layout of the lettering in relationship to the style of book being bound.
With forty years’ experience as a professional binder behind him, Glenn will demonstrate the techniques and processes he has developed, utilising methods that better suit the environment in which most individual binders now work.
Cost: £20 for members, £40 for non-members
No limit on attendees
Biography:
Glenn Bartley is a professional bookbinder and gold finisher. He is Head of the Royal Bindery at Windsor Castle.
Glenn trained at Guildford and in Oxford. He established his own workshop in Culham, Oxfordshire in 1991, and has taught widely for both DB and SoB as well as presenting at conferences. Elected a Fellow of DB in 1999, he won the DB Bookbinding Competition - Silver Medal - in 1996, and the Society of Bookbinders Fine Binding prize in 2005.
His work is in many collections, both private and public, in this country and in the US, Canada, South Africa, France and Germany.
In early 2017, after 26 years of self-employment, he embarked on a new adventure as Bookbinder at The Royal Bindery, working on a wide variety of projects for The Royal Household and Royal Collection Trust. Within a year he was promoted to Senior Bookbinder where he managed six apprentices on the Queen’s Bindery Apprenticeship Scheme until its untimely suspension in 2020 due to the Covid Pandemic.
13 December 2025 - Christmas Event and Talks: ‘The Development of bookbinding as discovered in the collections of Staffordshire Archive Service’
Location: Ground floor hall, Kelly St., Kentish Town - ground floor hall confirmed
Speaker: Richard Nichols ACR
Description:
This follows the standard innovations that occurred over time from the middle ages right up to the twentieth century , demonstrated by examples picked out from the Staffordshire County collection, including wide ranging, examples from scrolls up to springbacks, and divided into ‘manuscript’ binding and ‘letterpress’ binding.
Cost: £20 for all
No limit on attendees
Biography:
Richard is a Book and Paper Conservator, accredited by Icon in 2000. He enjoyed 44 years working in Archive Services and Record Offices and has now embarked on an exciting new venture as a Conservator in Private Practice. He has always seen it as a privilege to work with the unique variety and diversity of materials that comprise our national archival heritage. His experience ranges from treatment of paper manuscripts and maps to Anglo-Saxon parchment documents, to volumes representing all aspects of bookbinding development from the twelfth century onwards.
He is passionate about conservation training, having been an instructor for 26 years on the ‘Archive Conservation Training Scheme’ of The Archives and Records Association (ARA), teaching modules in paper, parchment, and book conservation to student interns.
He believes in the importance of contributing to the wider conservation community including ARA, The Institute of Conservation (Icon), Society of Bookbinders (SoB) and the Midlands Conservators Group. Between 1992 and 2002 he served as Secretary and Chair of the Preservation and Conservation Group of ARA. In 2002 he co-organised and hosted the ARA three-day conservation conference at Staffordshire University.
He was a member of the Icon Accreditation Committee for 13 years, scoring applications for accreditation. He also served as a mentor to accreditation applicants for 5 years, supporting them through the accreditation process. He currently serves as a CPD reader for the accreditation scheme.
Richard is about to embark on a major project for the City of Stoke on Trent, which is the conservation and re-housing of the seven historic City Charters, in time for celebrations to mark the 850th anniversary of the first charter granted in 1173.
