“The most generous, intense, and collaborative learning experience I have ever had.” – 2019 Rare Book School student

Expand your understanding of book history during a Rare Book School course this summer. Our five-day intensive courses on the history of manuscript, print, and digital materials will be offered at the University of Virginia, The Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Institute for Black Culture, Amherst College, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Harvard University, and Indiana University, Bloomington. 

Among our thirty-eight courses, we are pleased to offer B-75: American Publishers’ Bookbindings, 1800–1900, taught by Todd Pattison (Independent bookbinder and conservator for the New England Historic Genealogical Society). This course examines the industrialization of bookbinding in America during the nineteenth century and the evolving organization of labor within binderies. Major topics covered will also include: the transition from attached board binding to case binding, the introduction of cloth as a binding material, and the increased and book-specific decoration opportunities case binding allowed. 

During the course, students will discuss a number of important individuals and establishments, including Benjamin Bradley, the Harper Establishment, the Altemus Bindery, Sarah Wyman Whitman and Margaret Armstrong. In addition the course will examine the changing decorative style of American publishers’ bindings during the nineteenth century and the increasing bibliographic significance of bindings. More than ever before, bindings began to be used by publishers to attract customers.

If you are interested in learning more about the process of creating a nineteenth-century publishers’ binding and who was involved in that work, this is the course for you! Applications are currently open and will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Visit our website at www.rarebookschool.org for course details, instructions for applying, and evaluations by past students. Contact us at [log in to unmask] with questions. 

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We hope to see you at Rare Book School soon!   

With kindest regards,