Alberto campagnolo: Scalpels and magic wands. From the physical world of book conservation to the...

From the physical world of Book Conservation

to the magic of Digital Humanities

Alberto Campagnolo PhD Candidate

Ligatus Research Centre, University of the Arts, London

[email protected]

@ACampagnolo

UCLDH Seminar, 20th November 2014

Scalpels & magic wands

20/05/2014 UCLDH Seminar 2

1998-2001

Conservation

of Library

Materials,

Spoleto

2000: Trinity College Dublin Bindery

2000: Studio Furlotti, Milano

2000: COO.BE.C., Spoleto

2000: National Museum Wales,

Cardiff

2001-2006

Ca’ Foscari

University

Venice


Cardiff

2003: Marciana National Library,

Venezia


Cardiff

2003-2004: Palace Green Library,

Durham

2004-2006: National Museum Wales,

Cardiff

2006-2007: Imperial War Museum, London

2007-2009

King’s

College

London

2007-2008: Guildhall Library, London

2009: St. Catherine’s Monastery Library,

Egypt

2008-2010: London Metropolitan Archives,

London

2010-today

Ligatus,

UAL 2013-today: Vatican Library

Book Conservation

Digital Humanities

3

Books as objects

Conservation

Digital Humanities

Conclusions

20/05/2014 UCLDH Seminar


Books as objects


Carpenter's hammer made of iron, wood.

British Museum As1896,-.47AN1382010


Jan Just Witkam, Catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the library of the University of Leiden and other collections in the Netherlands, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983, pp. 13-14.


Douglas Cockerell, Bookbinding, and the Care of Books, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1902, p. 104, fig. 29


(Pomian 1990)


Museum items


Library items


Library items

Living tools kept to be used as carriers of useful information

(Adams and Barker 1993)


Library items


Not susceptible to archaeological treatment



Library items


Not susceptible to archaeological treatment

Need for an interdisciplinary research approach



Model for the history of the book

Communication circuit – Darnton 1983



Useful tool for social historians

Limiting for the study of the book as a physical object

Communication circuit – Darnton 1983


Model for the history of the book (material book)

Transmission cycle – Adams and Barker 1993



Primacy of text

Brings together different disciplines

Common ground for an integrated history of the book

Transmission cycle – Adams and Barker 1993


Model for the history of the artefact book



Primacy of the artefact

Bring together different disciplines

Common ground for an integrated history of the book

Artefact examination – Elliot et al. 1982; Pearce 1986

Archaeological and codicological approach


"Binding for a Qur'an [Iran]" (56.222) – late 16th cent. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/56.222. (April 2014)


Conservation


CONTENTS

i. fire.

ii. water.

iii. gas and heat.

iv. dust and neglect.

v. ignorance and bigotry.

vi. the bookworm.

vii. other vermin.

viii. bookbinders.

ix. collectors.

x. servants and children.

postscriptum.

conclusion.


viii. bookbinders (or book conservators).

A good binding gives pleasure. — Deadly effects of the “plough” as used by binders. — Not confined to bye-gone times. — Instances of injury. — De Rome, a good binder but a great cropper. — Books “hacked.” — Bad lettering. — Treasures in book-covers. — Books washed, sized, and mended. — “Cases” often preferable to re-binding. ix. collectors.

Bagford the biblioclast. — Illustrations torn from MSS. — Title-pages torn from books. — Rubens, his engraved titles. — Colophons torn out of books. — Lincoln Cathedral. — Dr. Dibdin’s Nosegay. — Theurdanck. — Fragments of MSS. — Some libraries almost useless. — Pepysian. — Teylerian. — Sir Thomas Phillipps. x. servants and children.

Library invaded for the purpose of dusting. — Spring clean. — Dust to be got rid of. — Ways of doing so. — Carefulness praised. — Bad nature of certain books — Metal clasps and rivets. — How to dust. — Children often injure books. — Examples. — Story of boys in a country library.


The Nag Hammadi Codices.

13 leather-bound single-quire papyrus volumes discovered by Egyptian farmers in 1945.

Dated mid-fourth century A.D.

©Institute for A

ntiquity and Christianity in Claremont, CA

, U

SA



Gnostic texts.

©Institute for A

ntiquity and Christianity in Claremont, CA

, U

SA



Reconstruction of the binding based on evidence left after restoration (Szirmai 1999).


Compendio delle historie del regno di Napoli

composto da messer Pandolfo Collenucio iurisconsulto in Pesaro,

Venezia, per Michele I Tramezzino, 1541 Biblioteca Diocesana B. Lucia Broccadelli di Narni (TR) AR 3 V 332


Carpenter's hammer made of iron, wood.

British Museum As1896,-.47AN1382010


Cima da Conegliano, Conegliano Altarpiece,

tempera on panel transferred on canvas, ca. 1492


The Stari Most ("Old Bridge"), Mostar,16th century.

©A

ga K

han C

ollege at M

IT


The Stari Most ("Old Bridge"), Mostar – bombed 1993.


The Stari Most ("Old Bridge"), Mostar – collapsed 1993.


The Stari Most built new, in the same form, Mostar – collapsed 2004.


Conservation


Scriptors


Codicological integrity


Artefacts, Conservation, and


Miracles


Great Parchment Book Project

Text encoding

Computer science

Conservation


http://www.greatparchmentbook.org/


http://reality.cs.ucl.ac.uk/projects/gpb/


Codicological integrity


http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/bge/cl0054


http://dorpdev.library.upenn.edu/collation



http://digitalgalen.net/

digital Galen Syriac palimpsest

private library

Vatican library


Conclusions



Books (as objects) as silent witnesses

to be read and interpreted


Conservation


Conservation

+

Digital Humanities


Talk to book conservators…


…and let your children play with the books!

THE BOOKBINDER’S.

The children have called in to see the bookbinder’s shop, and are

looking at a map, which he has varnished for them. Arthur is telling

his little sister he thinks he should like to be a bookbinder, it seems

such a nice business.

(Oscar Pletsch, Child-Land: Picture-Pages For The Little Ones, London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1873)


[email protected] [email protected] www.linkedin.com/in/acampagnolo

@ACampagnolo

Selected bibliography

http://bit.ly/117geeT

Alberto campagnolo: Scalpels and magic wands. From the physical world of book conservation to the...

Internet

Transcript of Alberto campagnolo: Scalpels and magic wands. From the physical world of book conservation to the...