Texas A&M Book History Workshop (4-9 June 2023)

This immersive course provides an opportunity to investigate the manufacture of books during the handpress period by participating in the allied trades that produced them. Over the course of a week, attendees will create a complete facsimile of an eighteenth-century pamphlet by setting, correcting, and imposing type on an English common press and printing the book in three octavo formes. Likewise, the workshop’s projects extend to other handpress-era technologies, including typecasting, papermaking, marbling, bookbinding, and illustration. These experiential learning sessions are further enriched by a series of scholarly lectures which draw upon the extensive historical collections housed at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives. Together, they provide a unique opportunity for book historians, literary scholars, librarians, and interested members of the general public to learn about the history of books and printing.

Daily lab sessions concentrate on printing in the hand press era and its allied technologies, including typecasting, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and ink-making. Among the activities included in these sessions are casting type in a hand mould, setting type and preparing it for the press, printing on a period-accurate common press, papermaking, creating marbled and paste papers, and experimenting with a number of book illustration techniques.

Throughout the week, seminar sessions provide a thematic survey of book and printing history, with the collections of Cushing Memorial Library providing examples of some of the most significant artifacts and books in the history of recorded culture. These objects include Mesopotamian clay tablets and medieval manuscripts before focusing on developments in the hand press era.

The workshop concludes with a celebratory wayzgoose, a reenactment of the annual party traditionally thrown by the master printer for his journeymen and apprentices.

The registration fee for the Workshop is $1100, of which a $100 deposit is due at the time of admittance. Failure to remit this deposit within one week of acceptance will result in the forfeiture of an applicant’s seat. The full payment is due six weeks prior to the Workshop.

Applications received before 24 February 2023 will receive first consideration, after which admissions will continue on a rolling basis.

Registration website link:  Cushing Memorial Library and Archives :: Book History Workshop (tamu.edu)

More information link:  Cushing Memorial Library and Archives :: Book History Workshop (tamu.edu)

[For more information and to register, please go to: http://library.tamu.edu/book-history, or contact Kevin O’Sullivan at kmosullivan <at> tamu <dot> edu]