From Pigskin to Paper: The Art and Craft of Bookbinding

University of Otago Special Collections is pleased to announce that our current exhibition From Pigskin to Paper: The Art and Craft of Bookbinding at the de Beer Gallery, University of Otago, is now online. Thanks to all involved in this.

 http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/exhibitions/bindings/

Although the physical is so much better, folk from outside Dunedin can now enjoy the exhibition, which presents an overview using samples of bindings from our collection. And a wide selection are on display. They range from early pigskin and vellum bound books, Cambridge-style examples, and a Louis XIV binding, to publishers’ bindings, works by the New Zealand binder Eleanor Joachim (1874-1957), and a few examples from local Dunedin binders. One highlight is a binding of the Bible, Vol. III (Venice: Johannes Herbort for J. de Colonia, N. Jenson, 31 July 1481) executed by the Rood and Hunt Binder, Oxford, circa 1482. 

This is the earliest English binding in New Zealand, and has additional significance in that the sewing guards within are fragments of indulgences printed by William Caxton in Westminster, c1480, and John Lettou (London), after 1480. These fragments were discovered by Christopher de Hamel back in the 1980s.