6/8-6/12
Manipulating Leather
An Art of its Own
Coleen Curry

In this five-day workshop Coleen will share some of her favorite decorative surface techniques that will enable students to turn leather and suede into beautiful pieces of art to be used for decorative inlays and onlays for bindings, covering books, and flyleaves. We will finish the workshop making a limp binding with leather doublures using the leather decorated in class.

With Coleen’s guidance and demonstration, the class will experiment with dyes, ink, and paint on both dyed and undyed leather, and discuss each of their uses, limitations, and applications. Students will work with several resist techniques and image transfer techniques. The class will explore a variety of surface finishes that range from highly polished, to satin and matte. Exploration of methods to create depth and dimension on a flat surface including embossing and sanding for example. In addition, we will experiment with collage techniques and foil applications on leather splits.

This exploratory and creative class provides participants with an arsenal of unique materials to use for binding or any leather project and will benefit all levels of binders as well as artists wanting to explore a different medium. Students will take home a variety of samples to use as reference.