One of the great privileges of working with contemporary bindings is having the opportunity to meet their creators. Stuart Brockman and Ted Bennett, President and Licentiate respectively of the Designer Bookbinders, kindly volunteered their time to talk about the intricate details of their work and the meaning behind their designs.

Stuart Brockman has been binding alongside his father, James, since 1995, and they now run the bindery as a family business with Stuart's wife Louise, who makes the marbled papers used in his bindings; his work is represented in private and institutional collections worldwide. Ted Bennett is one of the most exciting young bookbinders working today, after completing the Queens Bookbinding Apprenticeship Scheme he has gone on to work with Stuart at Brockman Bookbinders.

To mark the visit, we laid on an exhibition of modern bindings, with a small number of rather more historic examples. Alongside work by Ted and Stuart, there were a number of fabulous bindings commissioned by a private collector from some of the most accomplished bookbinders working today.

From Maggs' shelves came several bindings from the collection of Bryan Maggs, including a spectacular example created by Bryan's teacher William Matthews, and a selection of the Christmas bindings, which were created as gifts for the women of the Maggs family in the early 20^th century, by the great binders Sangorski & Sutcliffe.