De onderzoeksgroep Boek, Bibliotheek en Informatie van de Universiteit Antwerpen en het Museum Plantin-Moretus organiseren een boekhistorisch onderzoeksseminarie door Professor Nicholas Pickwoad (Ligatus Research Centre, University of the Arts, London) met als titel:

Unfinished business: incomplete bindings made for the booktrade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century

op vrijdag, 2 december 2011, in het Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerpen.

Over de spreker:
Professor Nicholas Pickwoad has a doctorate from Oxford University in English Literature. He trained in bookbinding and book conservation with Roger Powell, and ran his own workshop from 1977 to 1989. He has been Adviser on book conservation to the National Trust of Great Britain since 1978, and was editor of the Paper Conservator. He taught book conservation at Columbia University Library School in New York from 1989 to 1992 and was Chief Conservator in the Harvard University Library from 1992 to 1995. He is now project leader of the St Catherine’s Monastery Library Project based at the University of the Arts, London and is director of the Ligatus Research Centre, which is dedicated to the history of bookbinding. He gave the 2008 Panizzi Lectures at the British Library, was awarded the 2009 Plowden medal for Conservation and is a Fellow of the IIC and of the Society of Antiquaries and a Council Member of the Bibliographical Society of Great Britain. He also teaches courses in the UK, Europe and America on the history of European bookbinding in the era of the hand printing press, and has published widely on the subject.

Abstract:
From the end of the 15th century booksellers, acting both as publishers and as retailers of books printed by others, used a variety of strategies to protect their books as they were moved from printer to customer. The varieties of inexpensive parchment- or paper-covered bindings used for this purpose are relatively well-known, but the booktrade also made use of unfinished bindings that held the text leaves together, thus reducing the risk of loose sheets going astray, but adding little additional weight to the textblock, and thus minimising transport costs. These bindings also provided a permanent structure, both with and without boards, that could be completed to the final customer’s specifications. The evidence for this practice is hard to find, as such bindings were never intended to remain in their first, incomplete, state, but enough survive to suggest that the practice was in widespread use for the first three centuries of the trade in printed books. The library of the Plantin Moretus Museum has a substantial collection of such books that will form the focus of a wider exploration of such books found in libraries across Europe and the U.S.A.

Dit (Engelstalige) onderzoeksseminarie is het derde in de internationale reeks onder de titel The Antwerp Chapters.

Programma
10.00u. ontvangst en koffie
10.30u. deel 1 van de lezing door Nicholas Pickwoad
12.00u. analyse van verschillende banden uit het Museum
12.30u. broodjeslunch
13.30u. deel 2 van de lezing, gevolgd door analyse en discussie
16.00u. afsluitende receptie

Doelpubliek
Het onderzoeksseminarie richt zich tot iedereen met een actieve belangstelling voor de geschiedenis van het gedrukte boek: historici, kunsthistorici, literatuurhistorici, boekwetenschappers, bibliothecarissen, doctoraatsstudenten… Wie deelneemt leest twee artikelen die vooraf bezorgd zullen worden, en participeert actief aan de discussie.

De voertaal voor de hele dag is het Engels.

Inschrijven
Het aantal deelnemers is beperkt tot 25. Snel aanmelden is dus geboden.
Inschrijven kan tot en met 20 november 2011 en kost 25 euro (incl. documentatie, drank en broodjeslunch).
U meldt zich via e-mail aan bij pierre.delsaerdt@ua.ac.be, met opgave van uw naam, affiliatie en correspondentie-adres. U ontvangt bevestiging van inschrijving en opdracht tot betaling. Uw inschrijving is pas definitief na betaling. Inschrijvingsgelden worden niet teruggestort.

Een initiatief van de Onderzoeksgroep Boek, Bibliotheek en Informatie van de Universiteit Antwerpen en het Museum Plantin-Moretus/Prentenkabinet UNESCO werelderfgoed, met de steun van Cultura stichting van openbaar nut (Brussel).

prof. dr. Pierre Delsaerdt
Universiteit Antwerpen
Opleiding Informatie- en Bibliotheekwetenschap Venusstraat 35
BE-2000 Antwerpen