Ligatus Summer School

"Identifying and Recording Bookbinding Structures for Conservation
    and Cataloguing"
and
"The History of European Bookbinding 1450-1830"

Institut National du Patrimoine and Centre Culturel des Irlandais
Paris
3-7 September 2012 and
10-14 September 2012

The 7th Ligatus Summer School, following the success of the courses
in Volos, Patmos, Thessaloniki, Wolfenbuttel and Venice, is to be
held this year in collaboration with the Institut National du
Patrimoine and the Centre Culturel des Irlandais in Paris. We are
delighted to announce the summer school this year in Paris, a city
with a long tradition in the study of the history of the book. This
year students will have the opportunity to see bindings from
historic collections in the city, including the Centre Culturel des
Irlandais, the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal and the Bibliotheque
Richelieu. Also, this year, the structure of the summer school has
been enriched to include new developments in the field and more
extensive hands-on sessions. Paris is a centre of culture in Europe
and a city which always inspires creativity and academic excellence.
Join us for this year's summer school to learn more about books and
their documentation in this beautiful city.

    <URL:http://www.ligatus.org.uk/summerschool>

Summer school context: The contribution that bindings can make to
our understanding of the history and culture of the book is often
neglected, but they can offer insights into the study of readership,
the book trade, and the provenance of books which are often not
available elsewhere. In order to realise this potential, it is
important to understand not only the history of the craft but also
to learn how to record what is seen in a consistent and organised
way. Librarians, cataloguers, conservators, book historians and all
scholars who work with early books, need therefore to understand the
structure and materials of the bindings they encounter in order to
be able to record and describe them. Such descriptions of bindings
are not only valuable for the management of library collections,
pursuing academic research and making informed decisions about
conservation, but are also important for digitisation projects, as
they can radically enrich the potential of image and text metadata.

It is our belief that bindings should be seen as an integral part of
the book, without which, our understanding of the history and use of
books is often greatly circumscribed. The main purpose of the summer
school is to uncover the possibilities latent in the detailed study
of bookbinding and it mainly focuses on books that were bound
between the fifteenth and the early nineteenth century. While both
courses concentrate in particular on the structure and materials of
bookbindings, each of the two courses offered in this summer school
looks at bindings from different geographical areas and with a
different approach.

The first course looks at the development of bookbinding in the
eastern Mediterranean and gives theoretical and hands-on training in
(a) the manufacture of specific aspects of Byzantine and
Post-Byzantine bindings and (b) the development of methodologies and
tools for recording bindings, working with examples from the
collections.

The second course looks at the history of bookbinding as it was
carried out in Europe in the period of the hand press (1450-1830),
with the opportunity to look at examples from different collections
during the afternoons.

The courses are taught in English and each is open to 12
participants. Although the courses can be attended individually,
participants are encouraged to attend both courses in order to get a
more complete understanding of the issues discussed, through the
comparison of the wide range of bookbindings considered in each
week. Since these are not beginner-level courses, the participants
are expected to be familiar with bookbinding terminology and have a
basic knowledge of the history of book production in the periods
under discussion. A basic understanding of the use of databases is
also desirable for those who will attend the course in the first
week.

Description of courses:
Week 1
Identifying and recording bookbinding structures
Tutors: Dr. G. Boudalis and Dr. A. Velios

    This five-day course is divided into two interconnected
    sessions. The sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are
    shared by Dr Velios and Dr Boudalis, but this year participants
    of this course will be asked to select one of two concurrent
    sessions for both Thursday and Friday. Dr. Georgios Boudalis,
    will focus on the major structural and decorative features of
    Byzantine and post-Byzantine bookbindings and their evolution in
    time and space. The relationship of these bindings with the
    early bindings of the Coptic and other Eastern Mediterranean
    cultures will be discussed, during lectures, slide-shows and
    demonstrations of real bookbindings from Parisian collections.
    This part of the course will concentrate on the influences of
    and comparisons between these different types of bookbinding. It
    will consist of six (shared) 90-minute presentations from Monday
    to Wednesday, supplemented by a two day workshop on Thursday and
    Friday during which participants who chose to attend will bind a
    small book in the Byzantine technique. The other part of the
    course will be taught by Dr. Athanasios Velios and will deal
    with the methodologies and techniques that can be used to record
    bookbindings. After an introduction on the capacity and scope of
    each methodology and technique, this session will focus on

        The (semantic web and the CIDOC conceptual reference model,

        Standardised vocabularies for book descriptions (SKOS),

        The development of database schemas for both the relational
        and the hierarchical model,

        The advantages of various implementation tools and

        Photographic records and workflows for large collection
        surveys.

A large part of this session will be devoted to the actual
development and use of a sample of a bookbinding glossary, a
documentation system for recording binding structures and the actual
recording of specific bindings. This session will consist of six
(shared) 90-minute presentations from Monday to Wednesday and eight
90-minute hands-on workshops on Thursday and Friday for those
students who chose to attend them. A basic knowledge of the use of
databases is desirable for this course.

Week 2, European Bookbinding 1450-1830
Tutor: Professor N. Pickwoad

    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 ten 90-minute sessions with Powerpoint
    presentations (over 800 images will be shown). Actual examples
    of bindings will be shown in the afternoon sessions.

The courses are supported by Ligatus and the University of the Arts
London, with generous help from the Institut National du Patrimoine
and the Centre Culturel des Irlandais. We have therefore been able
to reduce the cost of the course for this year to UKP350.00 per
week, excluding travel, meals and accommodation.

A number of accommodation options will be provided to the
participants. A detailed schedule of the courses can be sent upon
request. Applications, including a short CV can be submitted online

    <URL:http://www.ligatus.org.uk/summerschool/>

For information about registration please e-mail Karen Di Franco
<k.difranco<-at->arts<.>ac<.>uk> and give the e-mail subject as: 'Ligatus
Summer School'.

A reading list will be sent in advance to those who will attend the
courses.

The deadline for applications is 1 July, 2012.
The participants
will be contacted by the end of July, 2012.

The Institut National du Patrimoine (INP) is a higher education
institution of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. Its
mission is to recruit and train curators for public institutions and
to train conservators. The five-year conservation programme is
divided into seven main fields: Painting, Sculpture, Textile,
Objects (metal/ceramics/glass/enamel), Furniture, Photography and
Book and Paper. The INP also offers a wide range of training
sessions for professionals and organises conferences on cultural
heritage.

    2 rue Vivienne
    75002, Paris
    <URL:http://www.inp.fr>

The Centre Culturel Irlandais is located in the historic Latin
quarter in Paris, in the 5th arrondissement. As well as its diverse
programme of events, the CCI offers residencies for Irish artists
and Irish language courses, as well as being home to the Irish
Chamber Choir of Paris. The brief of the Centre Culturel Irlandais
is to show a wide range of art forms, including visual art, film,
literature, music and combinations of all of these. The Old Library
of the Irish College, built between 1772 and 1775, is one of the few
surviving library rooms of the many colleges, convents and
monasteries which were situated in the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve
area of Paris until the end of the 18th century. However, the
original library collection was entirely lost during the French
Revolution. The current collection consists of almost 8000 volumes,
consisting of printed books and manuscripts, half of which were
written or published between the 15th and the 18th centuries.

    5 rue des Irlandais
    75005, Paris
    <URL:http://www.centreculturelirlandais.com>

In the first weeks of September, Paris is in transition between the
last days of summer and the surge of activity bought about by the
general return to work after the very quiet month of August. The
weather is usually as nice as in the summer but the city starts
again as the new school year does and as French administrative life
resumes. This concept of rentree extends to literary, theatrical,
cinematic and all the art-related and commercial activities,
offering a great many new exhibitions and events of all sorts. One
of the major events is the Journees du Patrimoine (Heritage days:
15-16 September) during which museums and historical monuments, such
as libraries, usually closed to the public, offer free access,
guided tours and workshops. This year's topic is "les patrimoines
caches" (hidden heritages).

Find out more

    <URL:http://www.moreeuw.com/histoire-art/journees-du-patrimoine-2012.htm>

Ligatus is a research centre of the University of the Arts London
with particular interest in the history of bookbinding, book
conservation, archiving and the application of digital technology to
the exploration and exploitation of these fields. Ligatus's main
research projects currently include the conservation of the books in
the library of St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai and the
development of a multi-lingual thesaurus of bookbinding terms.

Find out more about Ligatus at

    <URL:http://www.ligatus.org.uk>


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 26:2
                  Distributed: Thursday, May 31, 2012
                        Message Id: cdl-26-2-011
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