2012

February 25 2012, Saturday - Providence Athenaeum - 11:00am

 "A Bookbinding Anomaly: Linked-spine Bindings" by Sam Ellenport.  Sam has been the proprietor of Harcourt Bindery in Boston for the past 40 years. It is the last large book bindery in America still working in a 19th century tradition, on a par with Bayntun's in Bath, England. Through spectacular images, Sam will uncover a rare aspect in bookbinding: the use of the spines of books as a canvas on which binders create designs that span several volumes.

March 14, 2012, Wednesday, Fleet Library at RISD, 15 Westminster Street, Providence, 6:00 pm

Walker Rumble, book and printing historian, will give a presentation on the Roycroft Press. The talk is entitled: “Hubbard's Roycroft: A Little Journey to East Aurora." The talk is in conjunction with an exhibition of Roycroft Press books and periodicals on display at the RISD Library, January 13th to March 30th, 2012. Roycroft was an Arts & Crafts community in upstate New York which lasted from 1895 to 1938.

April 16 2012, Monday - John Carter Brown Library - 5:30pm; Stillwell Prize Awards (co-sponsored by the Watts Program in the History of the Book)

Richard Ring, Curator, Watkinson Library at Trinity College, will give a lecture on RI book collector Joseph J. Cooke (1813-82) and how the public auction of his collection benefitted institutions in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

May 12 2012, Saturday -(Place to be announced) RISD - 1:00pm

Jan Baker, RISD Professor will present - BOOKMARK: an exhibition marking Jan Baker's 30 years of teaching the book arts at RISD, highlighted by her student's books.

June 9, 2012, Saturday - Annual FABS Symposium – Boston

In the afternoon, The Ticknor Society will host the FABS symposium, open to the general public, on “Boston and the Book Arts” featuring John Kristensen, master printer and proprietor of The Firefly Press, on Boston printing and publishing at the turn of the twentieth century; Katherine McCanless Ruffin, director of the book arts program at Wellesley College, on artist’s books and the art of the book; Todd Pattison, book binder and conservator,  on the rise of publisher’s bindings in Boston and how they set the quality and aesthetic standards for book bindings in the mid 19th century; and Georgia Barnhill, Director, Center for Historic American Visual Culture at the American Antiquarian Society, on literary book illustration in Boston from Thomas & Andrews to Ticknor & Fields.

The John Russell Bartlett Society partners with the Watts Program at the John Carter Brown Library to offer other events of mutual interest to bibliophiles. See the Watts Program Events Calendar for upcoming Watts events.