Make Your Mark: Create Your Own Bookplate Workshop with Tori Hlusko

Tori Hlusko is leading a bookplate workshop at Parkway Central Library on Saturday, October 24, from 1 PM to 4 PM. It's a three-hour session held in the Rare Book Department on the third floor, and it's geared toward teens, adults, and seniors.

Hlusko, a printmaker and artist, walks you through the whole process: designing, carving, and printing your own personal bookplate using linocut relief. If you've never done it, the relief process is pretty straightforward—you use a sharp gouge to cut an image into a block of linoleum, and then you ink the surface and press it onto paper. By the end of the afternoon, you'll have your own custom stamp to mark your books.

The workshop is part of the programming for Well Read, Well Loved, Well Used: Evidence of Readership in the Modified Book, a Special Collections exhibition on view in the third-floor Dietrich Gallery from October 2, 2026, to April 17, 2027. The exhibition looks at how people have left their mark on books over time, so making your own bookplate fits right in.

If you have some extra time, the Rare Book Department itself is worth a visit. It holds a world-class collection that spans 6,000 years of human history, from cuneiform tablets to contemporary works. They offer free tours, rotating exhibitions, and a reading room for scholars and the public. Their daily 11 AM tour is the department's longest-running program, dating back to its official founding in 1949.

The workshop runs from 1 PM to 4 PM on Saturday, October 24, at the Rare Book Department, third floor of Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, between 19th and 20th Streets.