ABSTRACT
Bookmaking serves to put into a handy and permanent form an individual or group piece of work. Most of the reasons given for teaching the subject in school are common to many crafts, but two are peculiar to bookcraft and deserve consideration. In the Primary School it provides a pleasant way of using the children’s patterned papers to make more personal common objects of school use such as books and jotters. In the Secondary School, bookmaking can foster an interest in the making and care of books themselves, which are the repositories of so much of our culture and are, in some form, in everyone’s hands. The upper ranges of the Secondary School bookcraft, incorporating typography, bookbinding and perhaps woodcut illustration, can become a craft in its own right at the highest level. One explicit example of the very simplest sort of bookmaking in the hand for juniors may help.
