Build Your Own Archive!: A Japanese Bookbinding Workshop
Join us at TARQ for an Japanese Bookbinding Workshop with Papyrus Cotton!
Books are intimate living archives — carrying stories, fragments, pressed botanicals, maps, letters, and memories. Join us at TARQ for Build Your Own Archive!, a hands-on workshop exploring how books can become personal spaces for collecting, remembering, and creating, in dialogue with Parag's explorations of coastal ecology and histories.
We'll begin with the basics of Japanese stab bookbinding — assembling and binding your own book while learning traditional stitching patterns. From there, we'll turn the book into a personal archive: using found papers, photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, receipts and other bits and pieces, we'll experiment with collage and personalise our covers. We'll also make a small personal talisman — something meaningful to carry an intention or wish.
No previous bookbinding or art experience is needed — just bring your curiosity, and if you like, a few small personal things you'd enjoy incorporating into your book. By the end, you'll have handbound your own journal, created a personalised cover, made a talisman, and started building your very own living archive.
Build Your Own Archive! is a collaboration between Papyrus Cotton and TARQ, bringing together bookmaking, collecting, and the everyday stories held within objects.
