Introducing the SFCB
The San Francisco Center for the Book is devoted to teaching the many arts and crafts that go into making books by hand. We introduce and foster the joys of books and bookmaking—their history, artistry, continuing presence in our culture and their enduring importance as a medium of self-expression. We provide both a home for Bay Area book artists and a place where the wider community can discover book arts. Everyone is welcome here, experienced practitioners and newcomers alike. Our scores of workshops foster learning at all levels: from introductory classes to yearlong courses, from traditional bookbinding to cutting-edge printing techniques to experimental book forms. There's always an exhibition up at the Center, designed to inform and delight visitors. Free public programs abound, too, from poetry readings, to book signings to gallery talks. We hope you'll visit us. But if you can't, you can still share the excitement by browsing our Book Pix pages, our Workshops or our Online Gallery. Welcome!

Hours, Directions & Amenities

•		300 De Haro Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103 The entrance is on the 16th St. side of the building, enter at the red awning. We have good evening and weekend parking, plus easy access to public transportation. Click here for directions.
•		Phone us at 415-565-0545 or send a fax to 415-565-0556.
•		We are open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
•		Two cafes in our building are open during most workshop hours and there are many other nearby restaurants.
•		You'll find an ATM cash dispenser across the street inside World Gym.

Our History
The Center was co-founded by Mary Austin and Kathleen Burch, who recognized a growing need in San Francisco and the Bay Area for a facility specifically designed and equipped for the book arts. The first center of its kind on the West Coast, the SFCB was modeled after two similar organizations, The Center for Book Arts in New York and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis.

We incorporated in March of 1996 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Our grand opening on July 30, 1996, attracted an overflow crowd of more than 400 people. From our first season, with 64 students in a dozen classes, we've grown to more than 350 classes, events and exhibitions per year, with an annual enrollment of more than 2,000 students and a catalog, published three times a year, that reaches 10,000 people. In early 2001, this growth prompted a move within the same building to a 4,500- square-foot space, including a large exhibition gallery overlooking our print studio, a platemaking lab, a separate bindery, and a library/conference room.

The Center offers some 50 free events a year and cultivates ties with varied Bay Area groups to reach a broader audience. We've hosted special visits for librarians; gallery talks for book designers, and hands-on demonstrations for students at many Bay Area colleges. Working with local museums, we've organized book-arts activities to coincide with and enrich such exhibitions as the Fine Arts Museum's Artist's Books in the Modern Era and Treasures of a Lost Art shows, and we developed a book artists' studio for the exhibition XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. The Center also has collaborated with the San Francisco Public Library in co-sponsoring lectures by visiting book artists.

Our Youngest Audience
The Center has had a K-12 book-arts education program since 1996, at first focusing primarily on workshops at the Center for classroom teachers. But Youth Programming has grown aggressively since 2002. Our new ventures have included more frequent and varied teacher classes; workshops in 2002 and 2004 by Paul Johnson, an internationally recognized expert in children's literacy; a pilot project for teaching urban teens to print their own poetry; a book-artist-in residency program at a Chinatown elementary school; numerous K-12 field trips and in-class bookmaking sessions by SFCB artists; and frequent Family Days and Teacher Open Houses, which are free to the public.

And we have dramatically expanded our in-class bookmaking activities with an innovative free program that supports children's literacy through the book arts. Called The ABC Initiative, or the Art of the Book in the Classroom, it brings book artists into qualifying public-school classrooms to teach students in kindergarten through 8th grade a range of bookmaking projects. Now in its third year, this program is currently supported by generous grants from The San Francisco Foundation and the Miranda Lux Foundation. Click here to learn more.

Our Organizational Friends
SFCB serves as a venue for the activities of other book-arts organizations in the Bay Area, including The Pacific Center for the Book Arts and The Hand Bookbinders of California.