Books as works of art

At the Onassis Library, you are going to see rare books from our collection up close. Apart from the learning they hide inside them or the stories they tell, these books are also works of art. And that’s because their covers and ornaments, their spines, and the way their pages have been put together during bookbinding make them unique. They possess all this thanks to bookbinders, the artists responsible for all of the above.

We have thus set up—in collaboration with Foinikas Editions and the Association of Social Responsibility for Children and Youth—a bookbinding workshop to give legally deaf and normal-hearing young people the chance to get together, work together, learn and communicate, through creative artistic work. Two bookbinders will be there to teach them the secrets of their trade: how to use traditional techniques and tools for book decoration, how to bind sheets of paper together, how to transform book covers into works of art by means of one’s imagination and creativity.