Bookbindings Academy 2026 – Day 2
Organized by: Belgian-Dutch Bookbindings Society and CERL
Speaker(s): Katell Lavéant,Malcom Walsby
Bookbindings Academy is an annual, free online event to share the results of bookbindings research with an international audience. The goals are to share knowledge on bookbindings internationally and to create more possibilities for future international collaboration to increase that knowledge. The Bookbindings Academy is an annual event, and warmly invites researchers to contact us when they have interesting research to present.
Programme
Friday 13 February 2026
- Katell Lavéant (Allard Pierson, Amsterdam) and Malcom Walsby (ENSIBB, Lyon) – Bookbindings in Two Sixteenth-Century Private ‘Dutch’ Libraries: From Local Logics to Personal Choices
- Abstract: This presentation will compare the bookbindings of volumes contained in two private collections assembled in the 16th century, now preserved respectively at the University Library of Utrecht and at the University Library of Amsterdam (Allard Pierson). Their two founders, the ecclesiastics Hubert van Buchell (1513-1599) and Jacob Buyck (1545-1599), although of opposing religious persuasions, followed similar paths: from their city of birth (Utrecht for the former, Amsterdam for the latter) to their exile in German cities in the last third of their lives.Both collections, which entered the public libraries of their cities of origin very shortly after their founders’ deaths, make it possible to study closely the types of bindings they contain, thereby offering a detailed view, both technical and aesthetic, of the binding styles in use in the environments in which these two owners lived.
