Fall conference will probe the form and function of the book in a changing media landscape
By Ivelisse Estrada
Four flights above Harvard Square, in a window-lined open-floor lab, 19 conservators hunch over their work of bringing two-dimensional objects back to life. The Weissman Preservation Center, associated with the Harvard University Library, specializes in treating photographs, books, and works on paper. One conservator examines a parchment-bound art print book from the early 1600s, its binding buckled and its pages frayed. In the next few months, the book will be prepared for exhibition. A German book filled with elaborate astrological volvelles, or wheel charts, awaits treatment for its original 1580 binding.
On February 12, as part of a workshop titled “Early Paper: Techniques and Transmissions,” the lab held an open house for 80-plus faculty members, students, and library professionals. The workshop was one in a series of three leading up to “Why Books?,” which will take place on October 28 and 29, 2010. “This hands-on element is one that we aim to replicate in the conference,” says Leah Price ’91, RI ’07, senior advisor to the humanities program at the Radcliffe Institute and professor of English and Harvard College Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Price is organizing the fall conference with Ann Blair ’84, BI ’99, Harvard College Professor and Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, also in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Conservator Debora Mayer, assisted by Karen Walter, applies a Japanese paper lining to a deteriorating 1864 campaign broadside for Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.
Dawn Walus, a book conservator, sews an 18th century letter book that once belonged to Peter Faneuil, a wealthy Boston merchant.
“We designed these workshops as a way to bring together different constituencies within Harvard’s often balkanized institutional structure,” says Price. “We wanted to involve faculty, graduate students, curators, librarians, conservators, past and present Radcliffe fellows, and others who work with books.”
And, indeed, the workshops have done just that. The first, “Paperwork: Agencies and Subjectivities,” brought 38 participants to the Radcliffe Institute campus to hear about work in progress by Ben Kafka, of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, and Lisa Gitelman, of New York University. A lunchtime exchange preceded the workshop, during which 16 graduate students introduced themselves and briefly described their interest in paper, from menus and ’zines to top-secret documents and subversive uses. “Early Paper,” the second workshop, convened an even larger group of students.
The third and final workshop before the conference, titled “German Manuscript Illumination in the Age of Gutenberg,” was organized by Jeffrey F. Hamburger AM ’00, the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture at Harvard. Art historians, curators, librarians, and philologists from England, Germany, and the United States examined issues around 15th-century illumination in front of an audience nearly a hundred strong. Their work will culminate in a 2014 exhibition of some of these rare specimens, to take place in Berlin and Munich.
Rebecca E. F. Wassarman ’87, the director of Academic Engagement Programs at the Institute, says, “The success of these workshops is a testament to the deep and abiding interest in textual materials.”
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"Why Books?"
October 28–29, 2010
"Why Books?" will probe the form and function of the book in a rapidly changing media ecology. Speakers will examine the public-policy implications of new media forms and explore some of the major functions that we identify with books today.
The Friday conference will be preceded by a series of Thursday afternoon workshops which will take speakers and preregistered participants on “site visits” to various local institutions, including a printing press, a conservation lab, a digital humanities center, and special collections of books and manuscripts.
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2009–2010 Pre-Conference Workshop Descriptions
"Paperwork: Agencies and Subjectivities"
October 16, 2009
This workshop, the first in the series, focused on modern metaphors of “paper.” Ben Kafka (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey) discussed the rise of paperwork with state bureaucracies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, while Lisa Gitelman (New York University) spoke about paperwork during and after the French Revolution and in today’s bureaucracies, as “paperwork” takes the form of PDFs and other electronic genres.
“Early Paper: Techniques and Transmissions”
February 12, 2010
The second workshop focused on the origins of paper and the impacts of its transmission from East Asia through Islam to the Latin West between the 2nd and the 15th centuries. Tim Barrett (University of Iowa), an expert on papermaking techniques, brought expertise in both Asian techniques and those current in Western Europe at the time of the invention of printing in the mid-15th century; Jonathan Bloom (Boston College), an expert on the impact of paper in Islam, also spoke about his work, which serves as a model for studying the impact of paper in other historical contexts. The workshop included a visit to the paper conservation lab at Harvard, the Weissman Preservation Center.
“German Manuscript Illumination in the Age of Gutenberg”
March 26, 2010
Gutenberg’s invention of printing from movable type has inevitably dominated the history of the book in 15th-century Germany and beyond. This period, however, was one of transition, in which many media, including manuscript illumination, retained their old vitality and underwent fresh developments in complex interaction with prints and printed books. This one-day workshop focused on the illustrated book—handwritten as well as printed—in this period of profound cultural change. Seven papers were considered by German, British, and American art historians, philologists, curators, and librarians representing important collections of prints and manuscripts in Germany. These papers examined critical issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, focusing on 15th-century illumination not as a “last flowering,” but as a vital art in its own right.
Photos courtesy of the Weissman Preservation Center
