Guild Meeting April 27 2021

Dear Members and Friends,

I'm happy to invite you to our first in-person meeting for this year, where we can at last meet without a computer!  7pm on Tuesday 27th, at our usual venue in Hawthorn.  Among other things, we will be looking for suggestions for the planned display of work for our 40th anniversary year.

Even though evenings are getting dark, damp and cool, we would love to see you in Hawthorn if you can make it.  (note that due to Covid we are unable to provide supper, but you are welcome to BYO).  But if you can't make it, you can join by Zoom, register by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We will have  some viewing of our projects accomplished ( or started) during the last year of non face to face meetings, along with some materials from the Guild Materials scheme, if you are looking for materials, send a note to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will see if we can bring it along.  We will have available a range of books from the Maurice Betterridge Collection, all sales assist the Guild finances. There will also be a few pieces of equipment, and some instruction stands.  If you have an unresolved challenge in binding, bring it along as well, you never know someone else may have resolved just such a challenge.

Most of all we can freely meet and talk, and enjoy the fraternal atmosphere of a shared interest in books and bookbinding.

 Regards Jim Finger   President

Discoveries in Bookbinding

Book Review The Wormsley Library. The Maurice Betteridge collection.

I have written a few times about discoveries in the bindery, finding historically important items hidden in books that are being rebound or in bindings or tools. Just last week I saw a piece about the State Library Bindery, and small photo of a reused piece of manuscript in the spine of a book.


I have been reading this book about the Wormsley Library. It took me a while to get to it. It’s the Library of Sir Paul Getty and knowing a little of the history of his father, I didn’t want to read it. But after his father passed, I think the children did use some of the wealth for public good so I started to read it. It’s a selected list of bindings used in an exhibition, and featured as much on the bindings as the works content.

What a surprise then to see item 1 of the exhibition.
The Earliest English Manuscript? I would have added surviving manuscript but it’s a delight . It is from Historica Ecclesiasticus (the History of the Church) written by Eusebius Pamphili. A work I am familiar with in the English translation, and I can see a modern copy on the shelf in front of my desk. From the mid seventh century ( 1640-1650) and is most of leaf 2 and 9 of the first 10 leaf section of the Eusebius, damaged by trimming which removed part of the text. It was found as a wrapper binding of a sixteen century work, discovered in 1984. Can you imagine the joy of finding such a piece while setting about cleaning up the other minor manuscript.

 

 

Read more: Discoveries in Bookbinding

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