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Tracey Rowledge

@traceyrowledge

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Bookbinder | artist | markmaker
I teach gold tooling too!! DM me for details.
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16

14 days ago

Here’s the result of a four day course of gold tooling on leather @citylit @citylit.bookbinding.bookarts. The great results are all credit to the commitment, focus and enthusiasm of my full class 👏🏻

This post marks the last course I’ll teach @citylit! I’ve taught there on a very part time basis for 24 years! It’s a great place of learning and has always given me the opportunity to meet such interesting people.

I was happy to finish my time at City Lit with such a wonderful group of people, who are now fledgling finishers full of potential - as the quality of work at this early stage was so good!

Please note, I’m still fully committed and busy teaching, it just felt time to close my chapter of teaching at City Lit. So if you still want to learn gold tooling DM me!!

#citylitbookbindibg #bookbinding #goldtooling #goldtoolingonpaper #process by @traceyrowledge

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a month ago

A very special day! @jenwrenlindsay gave @myrastimson @paulmoriartylondon and I a wonderful guided tour of Kensal Green Cemetery! Taking us to see beautifully letter cut stones, extraordinary bricked up sepulchres and some of the remarkable people buried there. Many thanks Jen for all the time you put into this tour and for the wonderful company and conversation we had with Myra and Paul. taken in Kensal Green Cemetery by @traceyrowledge

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2 months ago

Now that the dust has settled it’s time to thank @nordicbookbindingsociety for asking two of our founder members @traceyrowledge and @kathyabbotty to go and teach ‘Experimental binding using the Tomorrow’s Past Concept’. This four-day course took place during their bookbinding congress at Leksands Folkhogskola (@lfhsk @bokbinderi.lfhsk) Sweden.
A very big thankyou to all the participants for entering so fully into the Tomorrow’s Past concept, it was great to see 24 people sharing their knowledge and ideas - the creativity and ingenuity that flowed was remarkable. Such interesting book structures now exist that could not have come into being had we not shared those four days together. It was just wonderful. #tomorrowspastcollective #oldmeetsnew #bookbinding #conservationbindings #sharingskills by @traceyrowledge

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2 months ago

Thanks to @qestcraft funding @josh_f_james just had two more days of 1-2-1 intensive tooling tuition with me at my studio. Our focus this time was on gold tooling straight lines with various thicknesses of pallets across the spine of a dummy back, plus a nice sprinkle of gold tooling with individual hand tools. Great results Josh! 👏🏻👏🏻

#learncraft #finishing #recessedonlays #sharingskills #processdriven by @traceyrowledge

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2 months ago

Had the great pleasure of my young niece helping me at the bindery today. She’s becoming a great little bookbinder and it goes without saying that I’m super proud of her! ❤️ My shop is now in the process of being restocked in readiness for my next gold tooling course 👍🏻

The first image shows her working alongside the wonderful @kathyabbotty by @traceyrowledge

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3 months ago

Thanks to @qestcraft funding, @josh_f_james just had twp more days days of 1-2-1 intensive tooling tuition with me at my studio. Our focus this time was to focus on gold tooling straight lines! This was the first time he’d used a fillet - what great results! 👏🏻

#learncraft #finishing #recessedonlays #sharingskills #processdriven by @traceyrowledge

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3 months ago

Many thanks to the great students that gave all they had during this steamy hot week, to undertake an intense and focused Level 3 City & Guilds course on how to make a quarter leather drop/back box. This course was organised by the @boundbyveterans at the Daffodil Barn in Wiltshire - what a lovely place to spend the week!
What great results!👏🏻
This course didn’t include gold tooling, so the gold tooled labels you can see were undertaken with the wonderful Flora Ginn on a previous course.

Thanks also to @stuartbrockman who’s article in The New Bookbinder some years ago gave me the framework for how I make this type of box.

#boxmaking #quarterleatherdropbackbox #precisionwork #measuretwicecutonce #practicemakesperfect by @traceyrowledge

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3 months ago

I’m absolutely delighted that this recent binding has gone into a wonderful private collection in the UK!

The Blue Guitar: Etchings by David Hockney Who Was Inspired By Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired By Pablo Picasso  Petersburgh Press, London and New York, 1977  212 x 212 x 19mm
Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Last photograph by me.
 I was inspired by David Hockney’s etchings, who was in turn inspired by Wallace Stevens, who was in turn inspired by Pablo Picasso…

The imagery I created on the cover explores Hockney’s response to Wallace Stevens’s poetry, in which the mind is challenged by the imagination’s role to interpret reality. Hockney concentrated on creating images that were on one level representational, whilst also challenging perspective, where and how an image is framed, what’s an internal and an external space and where these spaces begin and end. Working with this premise, I created an image in which single partially open pages are suspended from the inner and outer edges of the covers; for me this image is about the nature of thinking. My aim was to create a visual and sensory introduction to The Blue Guitar, without restricting the readers response, but to instead allow the readers mind to be open and ready to explore this expansive book.
I began by thinking about and exploring what the impulse was for this book being produced and the facets of meaning within the text and imagery. I then took the book apart and began again, so that the structure, colours and imagery I created were at one with the book.

One of the aspects that captivates me about binding books is that my starting point is with a finished object, this I think is quite unique to bookbinding. Also, perhaps unique to bookbinding and specifically to this book, is that all the creative decisions I made are in direct response to the those of David Hockney in creating The Blue Guitar.
#finebinding #artobject #leather #goldtooling #davidhockney by @traceyrowledge

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3 months ago

Thought I’d take you back to 1998 to revisit Jonathan Parson and I’s second collaboration entitled ‘Towel’ (edition of 5) 100 x 150 x 8mm
A bookless binding, covered in alum-tawed goatskin, with an alum-tawed calfskin joint and doublures, tooled in blue and black carbon.

#collaboration #booklessbinding #carbontooling #gesturalmarkmaking #bookbinding by @traceyrowledge

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4 months ago

Thanks to @qestcraft funding, @josh_f_james just had four more days days of 1-2-1 intensive tooling tuition with me at my studio. Our focus was to continue with our exploration of gestural image making, by tooling two sample boards with short pallets and irregular shaped brass finishing tools. From there we branched out from gold tooling to create recessed onlays using leather and hand-coloured paper. He also learned how to blind tool and tool in carbon, both full and half tone.
Well done Josh, you achieved so much and it’s great to see how in tune you are with the processes and language of finishing!

#learncraft #finishing #recessedonlays #sharingskills #processdriven by @traceyrowledge

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4 months ago

Quietude’ 2026 (334x1560mm) is a site specific work made for the wooden panelled area above the door of a sitting room in a Huguenot house in London’s East End. This solid graphite work explores the nature of reflection through an ever-changing surface image. By capturing the changing light and internal architecture of the space it inhabits, it is able to hold and subdue what it reflects: it has a way of slowing down time.

This newly installed work sits alongside many other wonderful artworks in the home of @romillysaumarezsmith2. The other work to be installed yesterday was the stunning ‘Pieta’ by @mister_clarke . Romilly saw a relationship between ‘Quietude’ and ‘Pieta’ and was keen to be able to see them together, she was right, they do indeed have a poetic connection!

Big thanks to @mister_clarke for helping to install my work and to @caneanddavis for gessoing the panel so beautifully.
#sitespecific #drawing #gessoedpanel #artwork #graphitepencil by @traceyrowledge

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4 months ago