Ligatus news

It is with great sadness that we record the death on Saturday morning, 13 July, of Anthony Hobson, at the age of 92. The leading bookbinding historian of his, and indeed successive generations, his work, especially on Italian bindings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was outstanding and will remain a monument to a long and very active life. He was completing work on a new book when he died.

I saw this binding in the Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen earlier this year with a type of cover that I have never seen before. It is made up from two pieces of manuscript waste (written locally, 11th or 12th century), one on each side, which overlap on the spine, to which they are adhered. The spine edges of both pieces have slots cut into them to fit on each side of the sewing supports, the slips of which are laced though the sides and trapped by the pastedowns. I am thinking of calling the cover type a ‘laced comb cover’, but has anyone seen another?

Ligatus has recently organised a workshop on the value of free/libre software in education within the context of UAL. The official event booking page is here:

http://ual.force.com/apex/EventFormPage?id=a0RD0000008msBFMAY&book=true

Please see a recent article on the Times Higher Education website with a reference to Ligatus and Prof. Pickwoad's talk:

Professor Pickwoad is presenting 'Giving Support on The Shelf: The History, Development and Construction of The Book Shoe', the first in a selection of seminars taking place to celebrate 21 years of Conservation By Design.

For more information, please go to: http://www.conservation-by-design.co.uk/home.aspx?pagename=21seminar

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.

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.

Professor Nicholas Pickwoad will be at the conference, John Baskerville: art, industry and technology in the Enlightenmentin Birmingham from 6-7th April. Contributing to the section, 'Baskerville and his products', Professor Pickwoad's lecture is titled: 'Books bound after what manner you please: English bookbinding in the mid-eighteenth century'.

For more information please go to: http://www.typographichub.org/diary/entry/baskerville-enlightenment/

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.