WELCOME
Welcome to the West Australian Craft Bookbinders Guild. We are dedicated to promoting the are of the hand bound book, through courses and meetings. We provide specialist tools and materials to our members, and encourage them to not only develop their book binding skills, but to participate in the Guild activities and encouragement of others.
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Courses are held once per month for most months of the year, with a wide range of techniques available, targeted at all skill levels from beginners through to advanced and everything in between.
The Guild meets once per month in the suburb of Como, Perth, Western Australia. We offer advice, talks and demonstrations at our monthly meetings, as well as providing opportunities to show new works and techniques.
If you are interested in learning how to make your own books, or to repair your own books, we offer courses on a regular basis. Check out Events for the dates of our meetings and other events that we participate in, and Courses for all the details of our courses and when they are held.
LATEST NEWS
August 2025: The 2025 Perth Craft Alive event has concluded. With the weather being poor for a few of the days, it is not clear how the traffic numbers were affected, but we had a reasonable number of people at our stand. It is always good to get the word out, and see new people showing an interest.
Our courses are proving extremely popular again this year. We are now fully booked through to the end of the year, with long waitlists, particularly for the Beginners courses. We have so many on our waitlist that we are no longer accepting those either. This is good for the Guild, but we are always looking for ways in which we might accomodate more people. We are definitely turning away more than we are accepting at the moment. Our facilities do not allow larger classes, and as it is a shared facility we cannot easily get more time slots.
February 2025: We have now moved all our equipment and materials to the new facility in Como, and run our first weekend course there. It was much easier to manage with everything in the one place, and with the purchase of new heavy duty trolleys to move the guillotine and presses around it made it very simple to run the course.
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November 2024: Starting with our February 2025 course all of our courses will now be held in Como. This is a big move, as we will now have all our tools and materials in one place, and will be able to provide better services for all our members. Looking forward to 2025, and the big changes that this allows us to make.
September 2024: Our new storage facility in Como is nearly ready. It is looking great, and with a bit of fit out it will allow us to have all our materials and equipment in one place. This will make it much easier to prepare and run our courses, as well as providing easier access to tools and materials for our members. This has been a long time coming, but we are looking forward to it.
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May 2024: We celebrated our 40th Anniversary as a Guild this month. A small celebration gathering was held for members and invited guests at McDougall House in Como. We had 4 of the founding members present, which was an excellent turnout. Combined with real progress on our storage facility, it marked a major moment in the Guild's history.
March 2024: We are having a bumper year for courses. We have never experienced such a high level of demand, particularly for our beginners courses. We expect to run at least five of these this year, with many of them selling out within a few days of becoming available. If you cannot register, please bear with us as we try and cater for the unprecedented demand.
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BECOMING A MEMBER
Annual membership fees are applicable from July each year. From 2023 our fees are as follows:
Individual membership $75.00
Family membership $120.00
The best and easiest way to become a member is attend one of our meetings, held on the last Monday of each month, and bring along your fees. We can sign you up immediately. See our Events page for a complete calendar of meetings, together with what demonstrations or talks will be held.
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You can also click on the Contact Us button and let us know you want to become a member. We will be in touch with you.
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A discount for your fee may apply if you join in the last three months of the membership year, applicable to the first year only.
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There are many benefits for members: access to bookbinding supplies and specialist tools, discounts on courses, newsletters about binding and techniques and more.
