Bookbindings Academy 2025 – Day 1
Organized by: Belgian-Dutch Bookbindings Society and CERL
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
17 January 2025
- Ian McCallum (Munsee-Delaware Nation/ OISE, University of Toronto), Melissa Moreton & Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) – Beaverskin and Birchbark: Community-led Research on Indigenous Books from Turtle Island
- Abstract:Printed in Basel in 1645 and bound in blind-tooled leather, a copy of Buxtorf’s Hebrew Lexicon made its way to the Americas, where it was eventually owned by preacher David Brainerd (d. 1747) and used as a source for sermon-writing. Brainerd lived among the Lunaape (Lenape or Delaware) communities in what is today New Jersey. When his well-used book broke some time in the early 1740s, it was repaired, likely by Lunaape women, who covered it with a brain-tanned and painted beaverskin overcover which has stabilized it to the present day. This presentation traces our careful approach to the study of this book, which is both a settler colonial object as well as an Indigenous belonging.Now in the collection of Princeton University Libraries Special Collections, the book has been visited annually by Munsee Delaware (Lunaape) community members in an ongoing, shared process of learning about its history and its relationships to that community. These collaborations have also facilitated work in progress with Anishinaabe communities on a birchbark book, which will be described in brief. This lecture provides a methodological overview of the collaborative approach to research on Indigenous books from Turtle Island (North America) currently underway as part of the Mellon-funded project, “Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book.” The project, co-located at the University of Toronto and the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), offers methodological insights into collaborative work that centers the object or belonging within a web of relations.
- Alberto Campagnolo – Hybridity and Transition: Exploring Carolingian-Romanesque Bookbinding Practices
- Abstract: This presentation investigates the hybridity and transitional techniques evident in Carolingian-Romanesque bookbindings, with a particular focus on manuscripts from the medieval collections of Cambrai Cathedral and comparative examples from other repositories. By examining the blend of Carolingian and Romanesque elements, the study highlights the fluidity of bookbinding traditions during the 8th to 12th centuries. The analysis examines how technical innovations and socio-cultural dynamics shaped book production across Europe, enriching our understanding of medieval manuscripts.
