The Inks and Skins collaboration studies material aspects of medieval Gaelic manuscripts, fusing scientific analysis with codicology and linguistic study. These manuscripts contain a wealth of tales and poetry, historical, legal, and scientific writing from medieval Ireland. The manuscripts themselves, their creation, and their survival each have their own tales to tell.
Senior Rare Book Conservator John Bertonaschi will write about the efforts made to repair some of the wear and tear suffered by the Decretum Gratiani manuscript over the past 700 years.
Smudges on pages aren't always a bad thing. Cultural Historian Bénédicte Miyamoto and preservation scientists at The Library of Congress analyze dirty books to learn more about their prior owners.
Margaret Armstrong (1867-1944) was one of the most successful book design artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She designed more than three hundred covers, mostly for Scribner during a period beginning in the 1870s that has been called the Golden Age of Book Design.
On April 13th and 14th, the Library hosted From Jikji to Gutenberg, the Scholarly Colloquium, a meeting of scholars, historians, conservators, and librarians from seven countries. The colloquium is part of a scholarly effort to promote understanding and awareness in the West about early printing with moveable type in Korea that pre-dates Gutenberg’s famous Bible. Jikji is the abbreviated title of the world’s oldest extant book made with moveable type, printed in Cheongju, Korea in 1377, preceding the Gutenberg Bible by 77 years.
Laboratory investigation of material evidence in incunables - early printed books - can reveal not just how they were made, but sometimes when, where or by whom they were owned and read.
