Ligatus is a Research Centre of the University of the Arts London. The main objective of the Centre is the study of historic bookbinding through the development of digital tools and resources with particular interest in conservation.
St. Catherine's Project

The monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, Egypt, is the oldest active Christian monastery in the world with a unique library collection. Ligatus is offering conservation support through the St. Catherine's Project.
This project is mainly funded by the Saint Catherine Foundation.

Manuscript survey
On 3rd of March 2006, Ligatus conservators finished the condition survey of the 3,307 bound manuscripts in the old library of the Monastery. This completed the most detailed condition for a whole collection of this size, and it has involved the participation of 35 people from nine different countries.		 Printed books survey
On 1st of November 2007, the last team of conservator finished the condition survey of about 1,000 early printed books in the library, which is a good sample of the large printed books collection. The recording was done digitally using XML records and digital photography.
Boxing programme
The protection of the books in the Monastery is a high priority and the use of boxes is an essential part of that. Ligatus has developed a new type of box which will allow horizontal storage of books (as Greek-style bindings were intended to be stored) and endurance in the extremely dry conditions of Sinai.		 Cell 31A
The discovery during repairs in early 2003 of manuscript fragments glued to the walls of an alcove in the west wall of Cell 31A led to a project financed by the Ruth Breakwell memorial fund to remove the manuscript leaves and also some fragments of early paper from the late 17th-century wooden partition.
Moving programme
In October 2009 the last item of the library collections was placed in temporary boxes and stored in a safe location. The library collections will remain in storage during building work which about to start. This programme involved a large team of conservators and a sophisticated tracking system. 		Conservation workshop
During the planning for the rebuilding of the library, space has been allocated for the construction of a conservation studio. Ligatus researchers have been developing the plans for the studio.
The Decorated Paper Project

image of pastepaper
Ligatus, in collaboration with specialists in the field, is currently developing a digital tool for identifying decorated papers. This project aims to compile a database of described and photographed decorated papers in order to provide a reference collection and a tool to assist any user (expert or non-specialist) in the identification and recording of decorated papers.

A tool for non-specialists
Inspired by the catalogues of watermarks, the tool consists of a series of images of different types of decorated papers with which users can compare the papers they encounter in bound books. Users can then simply refer in their record to the paper in the Ligatus database having the closest appearance to that of the observed paper. This paper can therefore be identified and recorded without having to rely either on written descriptions or having to attempt to describe it themselves.

A standardised terminology (SKOS)
To allow categorisation and keyword searching, the images are accompanied by terms. The terminology of decorated paper used here is organised based on the SKOS standard (http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/). SKOS allows the categorisation of terms from the more general to the more specific, and facilitates interoperability between different resources, so the project's output can easily be shared.

Expanding the resource
Once set up, this resource will be open to submissions from its user-group, thus expanding the range and specificity of the examples held in the database. If needed, some basic recommendations on image requirements will be found on the website.

A research tool
Users of the resource will also be encouraged to submit bibliographical information of books in which they have found decorated papers identical or similar to the examples in the database. Where there is usually one paper and one reference, our intent is to collect as many bibliographical references as possible for the same paper and therefore create a more versatile tool with potential material for research in paper history.

Release date: later this year
Contact: a.martin@arts.ac.uk

Professor Nicholas Pickwoad presents a new discovery at Amsterdam University Library

image of manuscript
On Thursday, 11 April 2013, Professor Pickwoad took part in the presentation at the Bijzondere Collecties of Amsterdam University Library of the discovery of two leaves from a lectionary written in about 860 in the royal scriptorium of Charles the Bald, King of the West Franks.

Professor Pickwoad found the leaves last summer on the binding of a copy of Jean Calvin, 'In viginti prima Ezechielis Prophetæ capita Prælectiones', Geneva: ex officina Francisci Perrini, 1565, whilst searching for books to use in teaching his course 'European Bookbinding 1450-1830' for the Bijzondere Collecties Summer School. By great good fortune, Professor Rosamond McKitterick was teaching on the summer school in the same week, and she was able almost immediately to identify the date and origin of the leaves. Twelve manuscripts are known from this scriptorium, and these leaves are evidence of a hitherto unrecorded thirteenth manuscript, probably written for the royal chapel itself. Most unusually, the leaves were treated with great respect by the binder, who arranged them to show the decorated frames and gold lettering on bands of purple complete and symmetrically on the binding.

A full account of the manuscript leaves by Professor McKitterick and of the binding by Professor Pickwoad will be published in the next issue of 'Quaerendo', due out this summer.

Registration for Ligatus Summer School 2013 is now open!

We are now taking applications for this year's Summer School at Uppsala, Sweden. Please visit www.ligatus.org.uk/summerschool for more information about the programme and fees.

Presentation of the new Ligatus Decorated Paper Project to the Arbeitskreises Buntpapier meeting in Leipzig

Decorated papers on display at the Leipzig meeting, in the Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Ligatus is conducting a new project, which aims to create an online tool for describing decorated papers. This tool is designed for non-specialists who wish to identify decorated papers found in/on books without having to rely either on written descriptions of such papers or having to attempt to describe them themselves. On February 22nd and 23rd, Aurelie Martin presented this project to the Decorated Paper Historians Group, during their annual meeting in Leipzig.

http://www.buntpapier.org/arbeitskreis-buntpapier.html

This group, which has been meeting for the past ten years, convenes book and paper conservators, paper historians, librarians and decorated paper makers. Its focus is the study of decorated paper through various aspects such as the identification of techniques or the problem of terminology. The presentation in Leipzig resulted in a potential collaboration between Ligatus and some of the specialists of the group. We will continue to work on the website in the coming months and hope to go public with a preliminary version later this year.

For more information, please contact a.martin@arts.ac.uk or go to: http://www.ligatus.org.uk/node/681

Exhibition of Mudéjar bindings at The Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid

The exhibition entitled 'Piel sobre tabla', or in English, 'Leather on Wood' opens today at the The Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid. Focusing on Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages, where between 711 and 1609, Jews, Muslims and Christians shared a common space. This exhibition demonstrates how this co-habitation led to the development of a binding style called Mudéjar, unique to this area of Spain, through the extensive range of examples in the library's collection.

The exhibition runs from 12 March - 19 May, 2013.

Link to the The Biblioteca Nacional de España here: http://www.bne.es/es/Actividades/Exposiciones/Proximaexpo/encmudejares.html

Link to the English translation of the exhibition details here:
http://www.bne.es/webdocs/Actividades/exposiciones/2013/folleto_mudejar.pdf

Bookbinding Glossary

The main objective of this project is the compilation of a definitive bilingual glossary to describe Byzantine/Greek bookbindings by combining both the existing partial and conflicting terminologies and the new terms necessitated by the St. Catherine's library survey.
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This project is funded by the AHRC.

John Latham Archive

The visionary British artist John Latham died on 1st of January 2006. His influence on the visual arts is remarkable and yet consistently under-represented in the literature. His philosophical ideas on Events and Event Structures and 'Flat Time Theory', a unifying overview of the world, are fascinating, complex and worthy of serious study. This project focuses on John Latham's archive the survey of which will offer valuable material for this study.
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This project is funded by the AHRC and the Henry Moore Foundation.