Join us for a two-part class, including a talk about the design and production of contemporary books with editor and publisher May Castleberry, and a hands-on exploration of basic elements of book design and structure with bookmaker Lilly Rand Barnett.

Due to an unavoidable scheduling change for one of our presenters, this workshop was rescheduled from February 23rd. If you registered for February 23rd, you have been sent an email to let you know that we transferred your registration to the new date, March 8th. You will also receive a reminder. Your reservation will be held unless you send a cancellation to scovilleadultrpograms@biblio.org.

May Castleberry will talk about a variety of contemporary books, each offering different design and production approaches, to serve as points of discussion and departure for experiments in book making. 

Lilly Rand Barnett will demonstrate collage and design techniques that will enable you to create your own simple finished book or a prototype for a more complicated book project. We will also experiment with simple accordion books whose pages can be completed with text and images.

The Scoville Library will provide materials for collage and drawing (colored papers, lightweight photocopies of typeset textual material and photographs, scissors, glue, colored pencils, pens) as well as accordion-folded sheets of paper offering book-like sequences of paper on which participants may add drawings or collage.

Participants are invited but not required to bring their own materials if they wish – including collage materials and images as well as handwritten, printed, or photocopied text that they might want to include in their bookmaking experiments.

Registration is required for this limited enrollment workshop. Please use the link below to register.

This program is made possible by contributions from the Friends of the Scoville Library and from library friends like you!

This event is part of the Scoville Library's bookmaking series.

Lilly Rand Barnett is an artist and teaches art at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. Passionate about upcycling and collecting, she has been assembling art books for years. Formally trained at the Center For Book Arts in NYC, she has come to appreciate making books as a true art form.

May Castleberry served from 2000 to 2024 as editor of the Contemporary Editions series published by the Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art. Between 1984 and 2000, she was librarian at the Whitney Museum and editor of a series of limited-edition artists books that brought together original art and new writing. She has organized exhibitions at the Whitney and MoMA on photography and the history of the book.