About this Exhibit: Julia Miller
Julia Miller has worked in the field of book conservation for more than thirty years. She began her binding training in 1978, and in 1984 she joined the Conservation Department at the University of Michigan Library, where she spent ten years. Over the past decade, she has extensively researched the history of binding structure and style, and in 2010 she published Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings (Ann Arbor, MI: The Legacy Press). A second edition was published in 2014.
Julia has taught the history of bookbinding in the U.S. and abroad. In 2009, she was invited to join the team that conducted the conservation survey of the manuscripts of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt. In 2010, as a research fellow at the Library Company in Philadelphia, she studied bindings in that collection in order to create a typology for American scaleboard bookbindings.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone associated with the Papyrology Collection at the University of Michigan, past and present, with special thanks to Professor Emeritus Ludwig Koenen, the late Professor Traianos Gagos, Professor Arthur Verhoogt, Dr. Nikos Litinas, Karla Vandersypen, Adam Hyatt, Brendan Haug, Monica Tsuneishi, Amber Innis, and W. Graham Claytor, for advice, guidance, and help in locating items of interest to me in the collection over the years. I also offer my thanks to papyrus conservator Leyla Lau-Lamb who has helped me and so many other researchers through her knowledge and conservation of papyrus in this and other papyrus collections around the world.
Thanks also to Pablo Alvarez, Outreach Librarian & Curator in the Special Collections Library for his help with this exhibit and for creating the online version, Cathleen Baker, Conservation Librarian and Exhibition Conservator in the Preservation & Conservation Department for her help designing and installing this exhibit, Mary Claire Morris in the Communications Office for handling the publicity, and last but definitely not least, Shannon Zachary, Leyla Lau Lamb, Tom Hogarth and Marieka Kaye in the Preservation & Conservation Department for their help with this exhibit.
Almost all of the photographs that accompany this essay were taken by Randal Stegmeyer, and I thank him for his time, his knowledge, and his great skill in photographing the often difficult subjects among my research selections from the Papyrology Collection. And many thanks to J. Wayne Jones for the excellent images of the models, taken at very short notice.
Julia Miller, Guest Curator
Selected Bibliography
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Baker, Cathleen A. “Sodium Carboxymethylcellulose (SCMC) Re-Evaluated for Paper, Book, Papyrus, and Parchment Conservation.” Book and Paper Group Annual 26 (2007): 177–185.
Becker, Adam, and Annette Reed. The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.
Černỷ, Jaroslav. Paper and Books in Ancient Egypt. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at University College London, 29 May 1947. London: H.K. Lewis, 1952.
Charlesworth, Scott D. “T.C. Skeat, P64+67 and P4 , and the Problem of Fibre Orientation in Codicological Reconstruction.” Paper presented at the 25th International Congress of Papyrology, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 31 July 31 2007.
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Emmel, Stephen. “The Christian Book in Egypt: Innovation and the Coptic Tradition.” In The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition, ed. by John Sharpe and Kimberly Van Kampen, 35–43. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 1998.
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Husselman, Elinor Mullett. “A Bohairic School Text on Papyrus.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 6 (1947): 129–151.
Husselman, Elinor Mullett. “The Collection of Papyri.” In Coptic Texts in the University of Michigan Collection, ed. by William H. Worrell, 3–24. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942.
Ibscher, Hugo. “Alte koptische Einbände.” Archiv für Buchbinderei 11 (1911): 113–116.
Kasser, Rodolphe. Papyrus Bodmer XVI. Exode I–XV, 21 en Sahidique. Cologny-Gèneve: Biblioheca Bodmeriana, 1961.
Kebabian, John S. “The Binding of the Glazier Manuscript of the Acts of the Apostles (IVth or IV/V Century).” In Hommage to a Bookman. Essays on Manuscripts, Books and Printing Written for Hans P. Kraus on His 60th Birthday Oct. 12, 1967, ed. by Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, 25–29. Berlin: Mann Verlag, 1967.
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Laliberte, Norman, and Edward N. West. The History of the Cross. New York: Macmillan, 1960.
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Lau-Lamb, Leyla. “A New Material for the Conservation of Papyrus.” Book and Paper Group Annual 26 (2007): 186.
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Meyer, Elizabeth A. “Roman Tabulae, Egyptian Christians, and the Adoption of the Codex.” Chiron 37 (2007): 295–347.
Miller, Julia. "Puzzle Me This: Early Binding Fragments in the Papyrology Collection of the University of Michigan Library." Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding, ed. Julia Miller,Volume 2. Ann Arbor MI: The Legacy Press, forthcoming.
“New Bownde: New Scholarship in Early Modern Binding.” Conference held August 15–16, 2013 at the The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. Audio recordings of the conference proceedings: http://www.folger.edu/Content/Collection/Bindings-Conference.cfm.
Pattie, T.S., and E.G. Turner. The Written Word on Papyrus. London: British Museum, 1974.
Pearson, David. “Common or Garden: The Interest of Ordinary Bindings.” Bookbinder: Journal of the Society of Bookbinders 21 (2007): 13–25.
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Petersen, Theodore C. “The Paragraph Mark in Coptic Illuminated Ornament.” In Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. by Dorothy Miner, 295–330. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954.
Pickwoad, Nicholas. “Tacketed Bindings: A Hundred Years of European Bookbinding.” In ‘For the Love of the Binding’: Studies in Bookbinding History Presented to Mirjam Foot, ed. by David Pearson, 119–167. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2000.
Regemorter, Berthe van. “Some Early Bindings from Egypt in the Chester Beatty Library.” In Binding Structures in the Middle Ages. A Selection of Studies by Berthe van Regemorter, trans. by Jane Greenfield, 151–181. Brussels: Bibliotheca Wittockiana, 1981.
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Robinson, James M. “The Discovering and Marketing of Coptic Manuscripts: The Nag Hammadi Codices and the Bodmer Papyri.” In The Roots of Egyptian Christianity, ed. by Birger A. Pearson and James A. Goehring, 2–25. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.
Robinson, James M., ed. The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984.
Sharpe, John L. “The Earliest Bindings with Wooden Board Covers. The Coptic Contribution to Binding Construction.” Preprints of the International Conference on Conservation and Restoration of Archive and Library Material 2 (1996): 381–400.
Shier, Louise A. “Old Testament Texts on Vellum.” In Coptic Texts in the University of Michigan Collection, ed. by William H. Worrell, 25–29. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942.
Sign, Symbol, Script; an Exhibition on the Origins of Writing and the Alphabet. Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1983.
Skeat, T.C. “Was Papyrus Regarded as ‘Cheap’ or ‘Expensive’ in the Ancient World?” Aegyptus 75 (1995): 75–93.
Skeat, Theodore C. “The Length of the Standard Papyrus-Roll and the Cost-Advantage of the Codex.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 102 (1982): 169–176.
Szirmai, J.A. The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Press, 1999.
Tait, W.J. “Rush and Reed: The Pens of Egyptian and Greek Scribes.” In Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Papyrology II, 477–481.Athens: Greek Papyrological Society, 1988.
Turner, Eric G. The Typology of the Early Codex. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977.
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Wetzel, H.E. “A Set of Egyptian Writing Materials.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 9, no. 8 (August 1914): 181–182.
Wisse, Frederik. “Nag Hammadi Codex III: Codicological Introduction.” In Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts, ed. by Martin Krause, 225–238. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975.
Worrell, William H., ed. Coptic Texts in the University of Michigan Collection. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1942.
Databases
Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS)
Puzzles & Treasures from Cartonnage
Gallery