Category: craft

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Delrin Toolmaking Workshop. NBSS, Boston, October 4-5, 2025

Some tools you can make in this workshop, or design your own.


Making Delrin Tools by Hand for Bookbinders and Conservators. Register here!


This is a rare chance to take a two day Delrin toolmaking workshop. Anyone who needs small hand tools for manipulating, delaminating, spreading adhesive, etc. is welcome. Making tools is engaging, fun, and practical. Delrin is an excellent material for many bookbinding and conservation tools, such as folders, lifting tools, microspatulas, hera, and creasing tools. We will work together designing, roughing out and finishing of several tools. Working Delrin is a meditative activity, no previous experience required. Safe, low dust methods of working Delrin will be emphasized. This workshop is a great opportunity to geek out with other tool lovers. After the workshop you will have some useful new tools, and possess the know-how to alter, maintain, and make more variants. Warning: tool making is highly addictive. 

North Bennett Street School, Boston Mass. October 4-5 2025. Register here!

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Upcoming Lecture, “John J. Bradford: A Knight of the Folding Stick.” Monday November 25, 2024, 3:30 – 5:00. Boston, MA.

Frontispiece to Bradford’s 1815 “The Poetical Vagaries of a Knight of the Folding-Stick of Paste-Castle.

A Presentation by Jeff Peachey
Monday November 25th, 2024

3:30-5:00pm

North Bennet Street School

150 North Street

Boston MA

John J. Bradford: A Knight of the Folding Stick. In this illustrated lecture, book conservator and lapsed poet Jeff Peachey traces the life of John Bradford and interprets his bookbinding-centric poetry. Particular attention will be paid to the 19th century bookbinding tools he describes, and is in fact made of in the frontispiece above. Bradford was a lifelong journeyman bookbinder in early 19th century New York City. 

Not only are John Bradford’s poems a lot of fun, but his book is the earliest American description of bookbinding written by an actual bookbinder. Only twelve copies are held in institutions. Bradford was an odd character parts of the book are written in hieroglyphics. This presentation is based on his recent publication, “The Binder’s Curse: John Bradford and Early Nineteenth-Century American Bookbinding” In Suave Mechanicals: Essays in the History of Bookbinding, Volume 8. 


At the conclusion, we will read selections from  “The Binder’s Curse” aloud. Join us for geeky bookbinder fun! Non-bookbinders are welcome.

Registration is not required. Open to the public.

A reproduction 19th century folding stick, made from boxwood.

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John J. Bradford: A Knight of the Folding-Stick. Free Presentation at Emory University, Friday, October 11, 3pm

Detail of the Frontispiece from John J. Bradford’s The Poetical Vagaries of the Knight of the Folding Stick of Paste-Castle and The History of the Garrett, 1815. Photo courtesy The Rosenbach Museum & Library.

Please join us at Emory University on Friday, October 11th, 3:00-4:30pm, for an informative and entertaining presentation in the Jones Room of the Robert W. Woodruff Library. This presentation is in-person, and registration is free. Light refreshments will be served.

In this illustrated lecture, conservator and lapsed poet Jeff Peachey traces the life of John Bradford and interprets his bookbinding-centric poetry. Bradford was a lifelong journeyman bookbinder in early 19th century New York City, remarkable for his idiosyncratic, self-published book of poetry, “The Poetical Vagaries of the Knight of the Folding Stick of Paste-Castle and The History of the Garrett” (1815).

Not only are John Bradford’s poems a lot of fun, but his book is the earliest American description of bookbinding written by an actual bookbinder. Only twelve copies are known of this book, and they are all heavily consulted. Bradford’s bookbinding infuses his mythopoetic cosmology in this seriously weird book; parts are even written in hieroglyphics.

“The Binder’s Curse” is John Bradford’s most well-known poem, and we will read it together at the end of the presentation. This talk is based on Peachey’s recent article, “The Binder’s Curse: John Bradford and Early Nineteenth-Century American Bookbinding” In Suave Mechanicals: Essays in the History of Bookbinding, Volume 8. (Ann Arbor: The Legacy Press, 2023): 386-457

Register here

This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

Please contact Kim Norman or Ephranette Brown with any questions.