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At the ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ Center for Book Arts, you’ll grow raw fiber, form paper by hand, set type ,and bind your own books using facilities built for every stage of the craft. Located inside the Windgate Art and Design building on the ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ campus, these hands-on spaces give you the tools to turn raw ma>terials into finished books, prints, and paper art.

Fiber and Dye Garden

Just outside of the center’s entrance, the fiber and dye garden puts you in touch with book materials from the ground up. You’ll cultivate the plants used to create paper fiber, following each material’s life cycle from seed to sheet.

Papermaking Studio

In the papermaking studio, you’ll turn raw fiber into pulp and pulp into finished paper. This wet studio equips you to cook and prepare fiber, beat pulp with a Hollander beater and whiz mixer, and form sheets with moulds and deckles before pressing and drying them with a press and restraint dryer. The space also supports pulp painting and paper casting.

Letterpress

Composing Room

Letterpress printing starts in the composing room, where you’ll set traditional metal and wood type by hand. The room holds a deep collection of type, ornaments, and historic cuts plus a polymer plate maker, risograph duplicator, and shared work surfaces for design and layout.

Pressroom

Next door, the pressroom turns composed type into printed multiples. Print on a new style C & P platen press, four Vandercook proof presses, or a showcard galley press.

Bindery

In the bindery, you’ll build book structures from the ground up, starting with historic and traditional binding practices. Using a board sheer, guillotine, copy presses, finishing presses, and flat files, you’ll shape materials into book objects and artists’ books. Each student works from an individual desk equipped with storage and a personal bookmaking tool kit.