Here’s a prize worth writing home about — win a pair of vouchers for one-day courses at the London Centre for Book Arts. Just enter our giveaway for a chance to bag book-making swag…
If skills aren’t learnt, practised and passed on then they inevitably die. You wake up one Sunday, finally determined to pursue that craft that you’d always harboured a desire to become adept in, but lo and behold, the last expert in the field has just shut up shop, given their tools to a museum and moved to the south of France.
Here at Grafik we naturally have a passion for the printed object, its construction and design, as well as regularly lamenting the poverty of product provided by “print on demand” and so called digital “books”. Naturally we were therefore delighted when, at the beginning of last year, we heard that the first open-access centre for books arts was established in the UK. Based in Fish Island, near Hackney Wick, the London Centre for Book Arts offers workshops on a whole range of topics, from bookbinding and foil-blocking to letterpress printing and box-making. It also serves the artistic and professional community, providing member access to the studio as well as access to an extensive array of equipment and tools, from presses to guillotines to creasing machines.
Grafik and the LCBA have teamed up to give away a pair of vouchers for one of the centre’s workshops to one lucky reader. Whether you’re a designer or illustrator constantly frustrated by a failed promise to improve your skills in this area, or an enthusiastic dilettante keen to pursue a new hobby, all you need to do is send us an email to giveaway@grafik.net with “London Centre for Book Arts” as the subject and tell us what a Vandercook is (hint: look here). You have until Monday 26 May 2014.