Just after four o'clock, so I'm going to kick off.
Hello and welcome to the first textiles in libraries talk of 2022, which is the fourth talk in this series of talks.
My name is Alice Evans and I'm an assistant conservator here at the Bodleian Library.
And I am talking to you from the conservation studio at the Western Library in Oxford in the UK.
Thank you to those of you. Those of you who've joined us for the first three talks in this series, which were at the end of last year.
But for those of you who are new to the project, I'll just introduce that briefly.
Today's talk is part of a series of public talks organised by the Bodleian Conservation and Collection Care Team and the Centre for the Study of
The Book at the Bodleian Library, which is aiming to explore textiles found across library collections and many expected and also unexpected forms.
We've already had some amazing speakers talk on this topic from many different perspectives.
We've heard from conservators, curators and contemporary craft practitioners,
and I really hope some of you have either been able to catch these talks or will be able to watch them again on catch up.
And as well as the series of talks, the project is also continuing behind the scenes at the Bodleian as our conservation team works to develop our
understanding of all the different ways textiles can be found in our collections and how best to care for them,
which we've been doing through training and different outreach events which have been generously funded by a friend of the Bodleian T.A. Barron.
So I'm just going to run through a bit of Zoom housekeeping before we kick off.
We're recording this event, but as itis a Zoom webinar your camera and audio are turned off and you won't appear in the video.
We will share a link to this recording in a week or so's time,
and it will then be available on the university podcast page and also the Bodleian YouTube channel.
At the end of today's presentation, we'll have time for some live Q&A with our speaker,
so please use the Q&A box as we go and we'll try to answer as many of those questions as we can.
Also, you'll notice there's the thumbs up function,
which you can upvote the questions that you like the most so we can prioritise the most popular questions.
I just wanted to say our speaker is joining us from a hotel room today, so if she has any technical issues with the internet
bear with us, but I'm sure it won't be a problem at all. And so, yes, I'm very, very pleased to introduce our speaker for today's talk, Karin Scheper.
Hello Karin. She's a book and paper conservator and heads the conservation department at Leiden University Libraries,
where her work and research focuses on the materiality of manuscripts on Islamic world, which she's written and presented widely on.
She was a Baharie fellow here at the Bodleian Centre for the study of the book from December 2019 to March 2020,
when she spent time studying the Persian collections in Oxford,
which indeed included many different textile elements, and it was such a pleasure to see her in action then.
So we were really delighted that Karin was has agreed to be part of the series and talk to us today to share
thoughts on this topic based around her work and research on objects in the Leiden University collection.
And so I don't want to give anything away. I'm going to head straight over to Karin and yeah, thank you, Karin.
OK, thank you very much Alice. I'm going to share my screen.
And welcome to you all. It is a pleasure to be part of this series of talks,
which in many ways feels as a follow up on my stay in Oxford as a Bahari fellow that ended a bit earlier than planned
because of the pandemic and the looming lockdown of the Netherlands that made me return to Leiden almost two years ago.
Now in the Bodleian collections, I had unexpectedly come across several textile bags when studying the Persian manuscripts contained in them.
Though these bags are probably all produced around 1800,
they appear to be related to the historic protective bags that are depicted in late 15th and 16th century manuscripts such as in this example.
And I think that illustrates the angle that I take on textiles in library collections nicely and makes a good start of this talk.
To give that a bit more context Leiden university is the oldest university of the Netherlands,
and from early on it was a centre for Middle Eastern studies and languages and as a result.
Oriental manuscripts were collected in large quantities, this engraving, dated 16 10, already contain shells with Middle Eastern books.
Now, more than 400 years later, the special collections are housed in the main library building,
and the oriental collections extend to Asian, Far Eastern and Southeast Asian manuscripts and books heading the conservation workshop.
I have to divide my time between projects that concern our Western and oriental collections,
though I try to use my time to also study the material physical features of these objects,
especially manuscripts and printed books from the Islamic world.
In this talk, I'll combine materials from all these collections.
It will try to address several questions that concern me as a conservator,
but more importantly, I think certainly also a wider group of scholars, and interested audience.
When comparing textiles from such diverse regions and periods that can be found in collections like the one in Leiden or the Bodleian.
Some striking similarities and differences can be seen. That in itself raises questions.
Are the similarities meaningful historically? Can they explain a transfer of knowledge, techniques and materials and what do differences mean?
Are these cultural preferences?
Or do differences indicate that the availability of materials was dissimilar or that there was a lack of access to certain materials
perhaps? In order to answer such questions, we have to be able to identify and assess the textiles in the collections.
And this requires proper preservation, of course, but it takes something else as well.
The presence of textiles needs to be recorded, and these catalogue descriptions need a common,
widely accepted terminology so that people know what they'll find when they search for something.
Well, preservation measures often are in place.
It appears that the descriptions of the books often lack a reference to the textiles in them, or on them.
And this phenomenon, the abundance of textiles in libraries and their invisibility in the catalogues that will be the bigger theme of this talk.
Let's start with some examples. Sorry for that.
Here we go, in the second talk of this series. Georgios Boudalis
Explore textiles in the structures of Byzantine books In the Islamic tradition, we find similar components; sewing threads, spine lining,
A separate thread to create the endbands. But for today's talk, I would, however,
like to focus on the fabrics that must have been purchased or assembled by the book binder for his work in practise,
these textiles are often decorated and not clean, as you might expect for fabrics being used for structural components that wouldn't be visible.
Once the book was completed. They are there for material materials worth noting and documenting and studying.
So here we see a few of these examples of manuscripts with part of the spine linings exposed from Turkey, Yemen and Egypt.
Please note that many of my images were taken before or during conservation treatments, which explains the access to and visibility of the materials.
And you can see that these are all either colloured or really textured and decorated.
Now, this selection of Western Bank books shows that decorated textiles were used to line designs of textblocks in Europe as well.
The constructions themselves may differ,
but the craftsmen from both traditions value the strength and probably the easy availability of household textiles.
I'll repeat them here. What Andrew Honey said in the first talk of the series, books largely largely rely on textiles to be and remain functional.
Andrew also mentioned that the practise of using textiles for the repair of books is almost as ancient as bookmaking itself.
And we'll see some examples of that later on.
But I think it is useful to first highlight one example to point out that it is not always straightforward to interpret what we find.
We are looking for answers to questions like Why did those types of fabric?
Sorry, why did they choose this particular type of fabric?
Was it in fashion or is it cheap? Was it cheaper than leather?
Or it's simply easier to work with? So time and cost effective?
What's the fabric widely available? Or, quite the contrary.
Was it sparse and therefore could it be used to show off one's wealth?
Now, in this example, we see a collective volume in Arabic and it is undated,
but the textile lining of the fore-edge flap suggests that it is late 18th or 19th century because before that time,
leather was the common material for lining that binding component.
The damage to the inner joint of the right board gives access to the lining of the textbook,
and we can see that the same decorated fabric was used for that purpose.
A first conclusion would then be that this material was not precious.
Otherwise, it wouldn't have been used to stabilise the textblock and strengthen the board attachment.
The part of the structure that no one would see a plain textile could have been used instead.
However, looking closely at the lining of the fore-edge flap, we see several places where separate strips of the lining overlap.
And it appears that the bookbinder tried to use up small pieces, yet wanted to sense of coherence to the whole.
Does this indicate then after all, that this kind of textile was not so easily available,
or was it good practise to be as economical as one could be with any material and regardless of the abundance of it,
did labour matter less than such textiles? With our current state of knowledge, we are not able to answer these questions.
I'd like to take you fairly quickly through a few of the examples of textile coverings and textile linings of the inner board,
which are sometimes called doublure. Here in this light, we see various types of textiles on Ottoman bindings,
striped textiles on the left is a woollen fabric from Cashmere Yoddha striped
fabric in more muted colours and monochrome dyed fabric at the top are silks.
And here we see a block printed textile on the left, and that covers an early 19th century Arabic manuscript.
And it also has a decorative textile on the fore-edge flap lining.
On the right is a set of Syriac manuscripts from the Malabar coast, and they have a resist dye textile on the covers, and these are very beautiful textiles.
And it's interesting to see that, and the red one is actually made out of two pieces of textile.
So apparently, or perhaps, a full piece of textile was not available for that one.
This manuscript in Devanagari from the Indian subcontinent is bound in a roller-printed cotton,
and the boards are also lined with fabric that is hand printed with blocks and may possibly be older.
Though the use of textiles to make makes perfectly sense because of its properties and providing strength and flexibility to the structure.
I cannot really escape the decorative aspect and they resonate with the use of
marbles and brocade papers that you would find in other cultures in that respect.
The textile from some bindings appears to be secondary covering, in this case,
a Coptic manuscript on paper and a fine copy for which gold or mica sprinkling was used to give the decorative ornaments in the text
more lustre. This was first bound in leather, and then it received the secondary covering with reddish silk.
Whether this was done at the same time because it was a luxury copy or later on as a repair or protection, that is very hard to say.
And another example of a secondary covering is this manuscript from the Indian subcontinent as a primary cover,
a plain and quite possibly woven cloth was used and a decorative finer woven and textile was applied as an outer covering.
It seems that both textiles were combined to utilise the strength of the first and the prettiness of the second.
In the Middle East and Asia, such textile bindings are relatively common,
and many of them seem to stem from ordinary bookbinding practises or perhaps even a modest budget category.
We're going back a little in time to see some lining of board.
Because textiles, which were used as early as the 12th or 13th century for doublures in Middle Eastern manuscripts.
In the Islamic world, the fabrics used for this purpose are mostly monochrome dyed in blue, or green.
While we see much more variation in the textile doublures of Ethiopian manuscripts in Syriac manuscripts and in Armenian manuscripts.
This example from Ethiopia shows different textiles on the interior of the front and the back boards.
A phenomenon which is rather common in Ethiopia, and that is not uncommon in Armenian manuscripts, either.
In Western books, textile doublures are not that frequently encountered, though they may be found on, for example, embroidered bindings.
As with this, Amsterdam almanac dated 1763.
Another way of using textiles on the inside of boards is this delicate technique of filigree work, which was developed in the Middle East.
And you can see that it also involves the use of fabrics.
Originally, leather was stamped and then cut in a very fine lacy pattern and pasted over a round of blue or green cloth.
Later on, the technique was also executed in paper. Paper cuts.
Art is called Katie in Turkish and often includes a ground of fabric then as well as can be seen in this 19th century example.
A similar kind of filigree cut work can be found in Western bindings using parchment.
Both these findings are octavo sized, so fairly small, and the oblong book on the right is a manuscript,
the bound volume on the left is printed the New Testament from the 17th century.
The effect of the delicate cut work is heightened by the use of two colours of silk underlay, a green panel.
In the centre, bordered by a sand coloured strip on the outer frame of the covers on the spine,
the colours alternate green at head tail end in the middle and sand, which perhaps used to be cream coloured in between.
It seems that in Western bookbinding practises, textiles are mostly found on luxurious,
higher end of the Market Commission's velvet bindings and embroidered examples such as this one.
A New Testament printed in 16 27 order once shown above with filigree technique.
It is not until the 19th century century that cheaper cloth starts to be used for covering industrially produced books,
with the exception of the poor,
strong linen binding that Andrew Honey showed us the lowly status bindings that were to be frequently used as schoolbooks and such.
Now, this is in contrast with the far more frequent use of simpler but decorative fabrics in oriental books,
which may be related to the much longer continuation of manuscript production and the absence of industrial production.
In any case, this book here on the right.
Printed in 1735 is covered in a cotton or linen that was marbled, and it is a rare example of a simple binding in a decorative cloth from Europe.
In fact, I was wrong footed when I first saw this binding and thought it was covered in marble paper until I noticed the weave.
For a few additional uses of textiles in book production let's return to the enclosures that we started with.
What you see here is one volume of a two volume large format Koran that retains the silk back that was used to protect it.
The volume is not dated, but it probably is the oldest enclosure in the Leiden Arabic collection.
Next to bags, we find satchels and pouches and slip cases and the order books.
The textile components are not that obvious for each item.
The bag and pouch consists of nothing but cloth, and a box is covered with textile outside and inside.
But the slipcase only has its ribbon and a satchel.
That seems to be made of leather only needs to be examined very carefully to see the decorated textile on the interior.
Visibly only because of the damage actually. It could be that the textile with a pattern of peacock feathers was intentionally chosen
because of the symbolism as peacock feathers were believed to have protective powers.
Now, that sort of information, of course, adds to our understanding of the context of such items,
although much more study of textiles in books is needed to provide a fuller picture.
In all the cases, the presence of a textile provides information very directly in this instance,
for example, where the same fabric is used for the lining of the closing flap of the slipcase.
And for the lining of the wrapper binding of the associated text block.
This means that the slipcase case was made at the same time to go with this book in the same workshop.
Ribbons in different shapes and levels of decorative woven patterns or plain types occur frequently in library collections.
They are used as manuscript release straps in slip cases, but also as laces for keeping books fastened.
Common in many Western printed books from the period onwards when wooden boards started to be replaced by paper boards.
And those of you who have watched the previous talks have seen that textiles, have been used insight manuscripts as well.
In the first talk of the series, martin Kauffmann explains the presence of curtains in manuscripts,
I'm showing here examples of this practise in a western on the left and Armerian
in the middle and an Ethiopian manuscript on the right side of the screen,
and I will go into the treatment of one of these items shortly.
Below, the photographs of the opening displaying the curtains, you can see the bindings belonging to these volumes.
The parchment one for the European manuscript, the Armenian one in the middle,
displaying its stripe textile lining of the right board and the wooden board of the Ethiopiac manuscript
that is repaired with cord another way in which France is frequently used in Ethiopian manuscripts.
But first, let me conclude this overview of the use of textiles with a few more unusual items. In the oriental collections
in Leidin and more precise precisely in the Malay collections,
we have a large number of letters and some of them were still contained in the original silk envelopes.
A paper band with a decorative cut looking structure contained the addresses information.
The yellow silk indicates the royal status of that person. Over the years, I have worked on the unfolding and stabilisation of the paper documents,
while we of course, keep the silk containers and paper bands together with these letters.
And in Leiden collections, we had several manuscripts that were made and functions as amulets and such small and full,
the documents were often contained within a leather or a textile, sewn purse like entity that was very portable.
The textiles employed, thus are modest, possibly leftovers and chosen for their functionality.
In terms of conservation, we do not open these documents and the items are not actually handled much.
We just keep them well protected in a box. Historic repairs, then.
Repairs are simply the predecessors of modern conservation treatments.
They several the continued usability of the object, and it is not surprising at all that textile was used very often as a repair material.
Every household had bits of leftovers or discarded cloth items that could be used and fabrics could be stitched or applied with adhesives.
And they were strong and they could even be pretty as well.
Alice Fox in the second talk of this series remarks, that paper in certain ways is very akin to text and vice versa,
which is like textile artists use the material in similar ways as paper. In my mind that resonates with historic book repair as well.
Throughout the ages, people who use and repair books sensed this affinity of textiles,
paper and leather and textiles were employed in many domestic repairs.
These two items illustrate this widespread use of textiles in books. On the right
you see a block printed cotton that was made into a book jacket that kept the detached boards connected with the textbook.
And on the left, a repaired spine lining of which the outer ends were used to stitch on the detached boards.
And this item is an Ethiopiac manuscript on parchment with the binding of repurposed boards
first covered or originally covered in leather onto which decorative textile is pasted
now that is kept in a traditional leather bag that used to have a leather strap
with which the item was usually packed to a wall in order to keep it off the floor.
But this strap is now replaced with a multicolour textile strap.
The notches showing that several shorter pieces were used to get the required length strap.
Repairs such as these are of enormous importance to book history and our understanding of the use of these items,
but also the wider concept of material culture. And we can learn a lot from the techniques and substances incorporated in these repairs.
In that sense, our own conservator techniques are far less exciting because as conservatives, we try to do as little as possible.
Nothing that can be undone can't be undone. And we don't really want to add anything to the books.
But we have to act sometimes is clear.
And I'd like to end this overview with some examples of our approach to preserving some of the textiles that you have seen this presentation.
Starting with the curtain in this 12th and 12th century manuscript containing the Gospels that the silk curtain had become stuck in the gutter,
perhaps at the time that the manuscript was be bound in its parchment binding from the remnants.
However, just visible at the top of the page, sorry, just visible at the top of the page.
You can see that it was supposed to hinge from the top.
In this case, I consulted with a textile conservation colleague.
And the result is that what is left of the silk is now secure between two layers of silk tylle, which again hinges as how it was intended originally.
For this embroidered binding, the only real problem was the small bindings,
very tight fastening and the textile that was detaching on the inside of that clasp.
I decided then to encapsulate the whole binding in a Melinex jacket,
including the fastening in such a way that the clasp cannot actually be used anymore to lock lock the book tight.
It also allows the book to be handled without touching the metal thread embroidery.
But the jackets can fairly easily be removed, should that be necessary
other treatments involve the use of adhesives to stabilise fraying textiles, as was the case with this very unusual silk binding from Yemen.
I've used here to Klucel an ethanol to consolidate the outer layer of the multi-layered fabric binding,
but no additional textile or other material was used. Since this offered enough stability.
The manuscript is now digitised and the original is not likely to be used often anymore,
and the use of the books, of course, also play a part in the decisions made in the conservation treatments.
For the other textile items, more or less standard book conservation methods, areused strips of Japanese paper toned to match the colour of the original.
In this case, textile and adhesive to strength, strengthen inner and outer joints.
So for this Chinese wrapper,
this method was sufficient to repair the detached components and the materials blended in very nicely with the textile covering.
Yes. As you can see here, hopefully.
However, for several other items, the help and advice of textile conservators is essential, for example, for a set of Chinese export paintings.
These are very fine and detailed paintings on a vast length of silk,
and in the bottom you see a Manchu scroll, a document that has text written on patterned silk.
And another example only from last year is this document, and we work together with textile conservator Sjoukje Telleman
for the conservation of this edict from the Ming Dynasty, a text copied on silk.
So I have to scroll fit for purpose in a research library.
It needed to be secured between two layers of silk mesh, which still allows access to both sites to document.
But the treatment at the same time preserves the object's tactile qualities very beautifully.
I guess that to sum up, for the conservation of books that have textiles in and on them, as shown above.
I usually feel confident with my book conservation skills.
While it is immediately apparent to me that for such textile objects that do not have a book structure, specialist textile skills are required.
And I'm always happy when such projects then can be conducted in the library's conservation workshop because it's great to have an opportunity
to exchange all sorts of knowledge and tricks and share tools with a colleague from such a closely related yet different discipline.
I'd like to conclude with a few items that underline how much we need to interact with specialists from other fields.
In many ways, we are only beginning to mine our stacks and start learning about the textiles in our collections.
And it turns out that textile historians too are very surprised to learn that libraries hold
such large bodies of historic textiles that may even be datable because of the book's content.
And this help these items help in learning more about the trade and social context of these fabrics.
For the project, the book and the Silk Road, an initiative of the University of Toronto,
I was involved in a workshop that they organised and the workshop paired the book People with Textile Scholars from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Rosemary Crail, Jennifer Wieden and Claire Brown.
And with Philip Psycho's of Manchester Metropolitan University, who helped us identifying some of the textiles used in bookmaking.
The fabrics used to line the French flaps appear to be contemporary with the books.
But where do they come from? And the same goes for these manuscripts from Yemen copied and baged around hundred in very colourful textiles,
while leather bindings had been the predominant covering material for centuries.
The textiles seem to come from many different places east, west, north of Yemen.
They perhaps mainly illustrate that Yemen at the time was an important trade hub.
As it had been for centuries, especially along its south coast and the Port of Aden.
This last slide shows some of the documented textile equivalence from the Manchester archives
that Philip Cycads managed to match with some of these Book offerings from Yemen.
And I'm adding these examples because in one of the previous Q&A sessions, there was a question about the possible dating of the textiles.
So yes, sometimes that is possible. But this slide also indicates,
I hope that it is not just wishful thinking that the materials themselves can be a starting point for new research projects.
The abundance of textiles in libraries certainly justifies that we, as conservators, are slightly worried about the gaps in our knowledge.
However, the main issue may not be the lack of conservation knowledge, but the fact that the textiles in libraries often are invisible.
They are seldomly noted in the catalogues, the find ability of the items,
a proper identification and description using a widely accepted terminology to define the materials,
I think that needs to be on the agenda. And that seems a good place to end this talk.
Thank you very much for listening. Thank you so much, Karin.
It was wonderful we saw so many beautiful pictures and there are some questions that have come in which I will now ask if that's OK.
So the first question was actually a really nice one, the very first one in the question answer box.
Do any manuals exist that mention using textiles or construction of these bindings?
So I assume that's kind of talking about contemporary, well, historic manuals, that mention the use of textiles.
Pardon, sorry say that again. Yes. Well, yes.
Yes, there are historic manuals. I'm thinking of the ones for the Islamic world now.
And they do mention the use of of textile for certain components, but they do not specify the type of textile.
Yes. They don't give any kind of, yeah, requirements for type or quality or pattern.
No. But that, of course, is very similar to the mention of a paper or leather, for that matter.
I mean, when when manuals say that you, you take leather, it usually doesn't even specify the
animal species. Yes.
Yes, so that kind of also, then follows on to a question that Nicole, my colleague Nicole, has asked in the question.
Yeah, just is there any sense of different fabrics that were applied at the same time?
So I assume at the point of production, and whether they were part of a visual overall plan or whether patterns and declarations were almost at random.
So I guess maybe that's more that be the binder, the maker of the book at that moment,
do you ever get a sense that they've kind of matched colours, patterns?
Well, yes, I would say that some of the examples we've seen show the use of paper on the inside and textile on the outside,
and usually those are not colour block blocking programmes, but they they do come together very nicely, yes.
Thank you. I'm just looking through, there are lots of people saying thank you, beautiful pictures, beautiful examples. And agreeing about that kind of, seeing
the affinity for books and paper and textiles. And there was one question early on, which was are some of the textiles padded, but I don't... Padded?
Yeah. And they haven't given a specific kind of link to one of your examples, but I wonder about any of the examples you did show padded in any way.
Possibly the covering, I suppose. I haven't seen padded textiles, but it's a very interesting question and I will keep an eye out too.
Thank you. Yes, there's a question about a specific shelfmark for the Yemeni binding, but I think you might have mentioned a few.
So for that question from Michael Summers is the best thing
maybe to get in touch with you about the specific he's interested in, getting a specific shelfmark?
Yes, I can understand that, but it's because I used so many examples
I thought... if I'm going to throughout, that might be distracting for the viewers on screen.
And of course, if there would be a specific question about a specific item,
I can put forward the item that it concerns because except for the the first slide that shows them these bags that I
seen in the Bodleian and and that miniature Persion manuscript.
All the other examples are in Leiden. So yes, if anyone has comments about textiles, because that would be the case as well, of course,
perhaps people are watching and thinking, oh, but I know those textiles or I know that they were used in that region.
I mean, it's that sort of interaction I think that really can help us and also to get ideas.
Where should we start this journey? Because of course, it's brilliant that you are organising this.
It's also brilliant that so many people are interested in it, but a bit fragmented,
but by starting to talk together, the conservators, the library people and many people outside that name know much more about textiles than we do
we can I think, it's like putting these little things on a map
and then in this case, it would be a map of ideas And once you start thinking about, oh, then perhaps that area,
that region could be somewhere where we have a few clues that might be a good start.
And then I'm sure that other parts of knowledge will connect to that later on.
Yes, definitely that was a huge kind of, that idea was a huge inspiration behind us starting
this, it is very much early days, but we are all, I think, from all the people that we've spoken to,
book conservators, textile conservators, historians of book culture,
textiles, coming together and kind of pooling the knowledge and bringing areas of expertise together.
And I loved that section of your talk where you were talking about working with textiles conservators as well.
So we've got a question in the chat specifically about one of these projects, but I also wanted to ask
were they colleagues from within your own, within the university?
Where did the textile conservators come from? No, and these are really connections in the fiels.
So people that you call and say, I now have this on my workbench.
And and what? What do you think? And and then usually there is a back and forth with a few images, of course, and at least in our institution.
It really depends because the example with that that meant 12th century manuscript with the curtain.
Yeah. That silk was in a in a in a fairly bad state, but this was also a manuscript
that, so this is really a sort of colleagial gesture to advise me and so that I could do the job.
And whereas for a few of the other documents that I've shown,
like those Chinese export paintings and especially that Ming Dynasty edict, which is a very important document.
And it was clear from the start that we would have a bit of extra funding so we could actually
contract a specialist to do the job from start to end.
And also with the idea that we would gain some extra information about the material that is and can be known about such items.
Yes. And so the specific question that was asked in the chat was about the scroll,
and it was, someone has asked about the sandwiching of the netting and whether adhesive was also used or
whether it was just sewn, kind of, whether the layers of the netting were just sewn.
In my eyes it was amazing because it's, with a very, very, very thin silk threats and an almost invisible needle.
There is actually across the length of the the scroll
there are vertical threats going, picking up small parts of of the original
but the main strength, I think of the structure was reached by making much more connections back and forth, front and back, around the edges,
and then also utilising the small losses that were already there to make sort of connecting points along all the borders.
And we thought it was important that you can still see that you can roll this up and you can unroll it very fairly easily.
So we do keep it now on a, I think more or less this diameter,
museum board. What is the word? Roll?
Yeah. So it rolls on the outside of that
so there's not much stress on the textile and it's in a box that has on the on the outer,
yeah, you can see me still. On the outer edges of that scroll it has indented, an indented support, so there is no weight on the textile at all.
Yeah. Fabulous. Sorry.
Can you remind us the size of that piece as well? That piece was, I think it's only 30 centimetres high, but then it would be, I think one meter
sixty or something wide
Yeah, it looked about that, thank you. I'm just going to do a bit more of scroll through the chat box.
So I'm going to read out a question that's got quite a lot of thumbs up.
So this person has said wonderful presentation, interesting interpretation, linking medallions on West African binding satchels with peacock feathers.
Can you speak any more on this idea? Ah, well.
I read about peacock feathers, sometimes you find a peacock feather inside an item as well.
So it could have been a real peacock feather could have been used to, you know, to just ban the evil eye.
It would help you get through a journey or, so if that is the symbolism and the meaning of a real peacock feather.
You can envisage that the representation of a peacock feather has the same value.
And I think in that particular example, perhaps the surrounding questions could be, are our fabrics with peacock feathers,
I think sort of block printed peacock feathers,
were they common or was that perhaps rare?
And do we have other portable items with them? Because then we may start to distinguish a pattern, perhaps of the use of these.
On the other hand, of course, if this is a very, very, very common type of fabric and it's used for all sorts of things,
then I think that would suggest that this meaning is wasn't wasn't the case or not so likely to be the case.
But but I think they are questions that we should address at this point because we still know so very little.
Great, thank you. If you all kind of related questions, I suppose, as well.
Nicole is asking the question, can see evidence of textiles being raised from other sources, for example, clothing and then following on from that.
Someone else has asked is there a relation between the use of textile for repairs and the tradition of textile,
art and craft culture in the region or country
that those bindings were in can be kind of which you did touch on in your presentations.
I wonder if you could speak a bit more about that. I'm sorry because I did lose you a little bit in the middle of that question.
So it's just kind of combining two, just about the use of textiles being reused from other sources.
Yeah. And kind of repairs.
And also whether you've seen any kind of relation between the textiles then selected for those repairs and the wider traditions of textile,
art and craft in those regions or countries, does that..?
Yeah. Then again, I still ask?
No, I don't think I can.
In the beginning of my presentation, there was a slide with spine linings on manuscripts from the Middle East and Yemen,
and the one on that manuscript from Yemen contains a piece of fabric that has a blue stripe weaving in it,
but it also has embroidery. So that seems a local because the textile historians that I talked with over this
piece of textile said it's it definitely doesn't look anything European at all.
So it looks like and a local product.
And then it could have been used a lot just with the blue woven stripes in it.
And then perhaps someone thought, I'm going to make something more
special, so there is that. That was done in a sort of production site, and you could buy it that way.
That's one thing that we don't know. But if if that was done in a certain household, then I think that just shows that at a certain point,
the tablecloth or whatever it was, was too tattered, too dirty, too... that it was cut up in smaller pieces and perhaps sold to a local bookbinder.
Yeah. I just think these are stories that tell us more about the origin of the books.
And a more coherent research project would also teach us more about the use of textiles in a broader sense.
But I don't think that in any way, such textiles were chosen deliberately for that function.
It was what the book binder had at hand. And that probably is the same for the domestic repair
I think that usually they simply used what they had at hand and the decorative aspect
could well have been second to the functionality.
Yes. And I guess we'll never know. No.
No, in many instances we won't. Just get a very nice question
from someone who sounds like they have been very inspired by the talk. Who's just saying, how do you go about becoming a book conservator?
I don't know if you could say a few words on that, because I think one of the joys of this series is being... I'm sorry Alice,
I lost part of that sentence. Someone has just asked...
You've frozen for me now. So if you can repeat that, please. Someone has just asked about, how would you go about becoming a book conservator?
Oh, how would you go about, because it's so nice to work with all these items.
I think one of the joys of this series is being bringing people from lots of different perspectives and
kind of sharing our world of book conservation with people who are coming from different backgrounds.
Yeah, if you just had any thoughts about that, that would be lovely.
But the question is... How?
Really how do you come about becoming a... Yes.
Yeah. I think that is quite personal for everybody, really.
And in my case, I did see several mediaeval manuscripts that were clearly repaired rebound or,
and when I saw those, I was far more interested in in their repairs than in the miniatures in them.
And that is, I think, for me, such an eye opener because it taught me that in the end,
what I am most interested in is indeed structures and materials and the how and why of people,
why they make things and why they make them that way. And yes, so that is why I wanted to become a book conservator.
Yeah, fabulous, thank you. And someone has also just brought up is the question about kind of finding descriptions and how complicated that is.
And I think what you've already said about having to bring together people from different expertise to really kind of bring a lot of knowledge,
from textiles, from books to then, yeah, in descriptions of bindings. And I wonder if you could comment on that as well.
It really is one of the things that,
the catalogue descriptions that we currently have were made, of course, by people who who knew the content really, really well,
but were not really trained in describing structures and materials and with the best of intentions, they have tried to find their own vocabulary.
To make these descriptions. With our growing knowledge, we now have to say, I think that very often these these descriptions are not good enough.
And sometimes even they say something that is not true,
that is a faulty description. And when that is the case, then you don't know when a description is OK and when it isn't.
And that makes it really very hard for material scholars, textile
scholars and binding historians and so on to to start looking for things in the collection.
So it seems to me, actually, that we have to reassess
the descriptions that we have and then it would be great if there is a possibility to add more to these details.
So I'm not just saying it's a false finding because it doesn't mean anything, really.
Yeah. And I guess that links into what you're saying about things being invisible as well in collections.
Yeah. Yeah. These items are where things are kind of described at
such a high, broad level. It doesn't give you that kind of the detail that maybe you'd find out more.
Yes. Reah, I agree there needs to be more work in that,
bringing together the knowledge.
But lots of people in the chat books are just thanking you for beautiful presentation.
And, yeah, thank you for the pictures and, I think...
Yes, and lots of thank you, so I think I'll bring it to a close now because we're coming up to five p.m.
Yeah. So thank you so much, Karin... I really hope
the talk was clear enough with the the images. Yes, I think the images helped
and we got the sound. Yeah, but then I'm not sure if it's possible, but we could even think of re-recording
I mean, yeah, that would be great. Shall we have a chat about that later?
Yes, exactly. Next week? More stable condition. Yes.
Yes. Yeah, we have recorded this and the question answer session was great as well.
So yeah, shall I conclude? Thank you so much, Karin.
So I'd also like to say some thanks you's to the other people involved, thanks to the rest of the Bodleian conservation team and Karen from the EMS teams,
who's been doing the technical stuff in the background for us today and also to T.A. Barron,
who has been funding this whole series. And also just to do a quick shout out,
we've got one more talk in this series on the 27th of January,
when we'll be joined with by book conservator Jane Eagan and textile conservator Maria Haywood,
who will be talking more about some examples of the two of them working collaboratively together on textile covered manuscripts.
So yeah, that will be kind of wonderfully following on from some of the things you talked about, Karin, today,
and some of the projects you've shared and I guess tickets for that talk of free and still available on the Bodleian website so please do sign up.
So, yes, without further ado, thank you very much and have a lovely evening, everyone.
Thank you, Karin.