Course on European Bookbinding 1450-1820

European Bookbinding 1450 - 1820
Tutor: Professor Nicholas Pickwoad

Venue: York Minster Library
2-6 Feb 2009

Maximum class number: 12
Course fee: UKUKP445 (incl. VAT)

York Minster Library and Archive are delighted that Nicholas
Pickwoad has offered to come to York to teach his course on the
History of European Bookbinding.  This highly-regarded course, which
he has taught at venues around the world, is being run for the first
time in York.

For bookings and further information please contact Jeni or Sandra
on +44 1904 557213 or email suepWhich is found in this domain_yorkminster@org

Course programme: The history of bookbinding is not simply the
history of a decorative art, but that of a craft answering a
commercial need. This course will follow European bookbinding from
the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, using the bindings themselves to illustrate the aims and
intentions of the binding trade. A large part of the course will be
devoted to the identification of both broad and detailed
distinctions within the larger groups of plain commercial bindings
and the possibilities of identifying the work of different
countries, cities, even workshops without reference to finishing
tools. The identification and significance of the different
materials used in bookbinding will be examined, as well as the
classification of bookbindings by structural type, and how these
types developed through the three centuries covered by the course.
The development of binding decoration will be touched on, but will
not form a major part of the discussion.

The course consists of two 90-minute sessions each morning which
take the form of illustrated lectures (over 800 pictures will be
shown). Actual examples of bindings are shown and discussed in the
afternoon sessions, making use of historic bindings held at York
Minster's Library to supplement the pictures. The students are
expected to have a reasonable knowledge of bookbinding terms and a
basic knowledge of the history of book production in the period
under discussion. The purpose of the course is to encourage an
awareness of the possibilities latent in the detailed study of
bookbindings and is thus aimed at all those handling books bound in
this period, but it has particular relevance for those involved in
the repair and conservation of such materials.

This course will, for the first time, incorporate elements of the
new glossary of bookbinding terms being compiled by the Ligatus
Research Unit at the University of the Arts in London, due to be
opened to public use at Easter, 2009.

Nicholas Pickwoad ACR, FIIC is a highly-esteemed book conservator
and Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts, London.  He is
Project Leader of the Camberwell / St. Catherine's Monastery
Library, Sinai / Egypt. From 1992 to 1995, he was Conservator at the
Harvard University Library.  He has been an Advisor to the National
Trust on book conservation since 1978.  He is also the Director of
Ligatus--a new Research Unit of the University of the Arts, London.
The main objective of the unit is the study of historic bookbinding
through the development of digital tools and resources with
particular interest to conservation.

Richard Hawkes
Artworks Conservation
Harrogate


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