An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Steffi Dippold and Michael Galban (Centre for Research Collections Fellows 2022; University of Kansas/Seneca Art & Culture Center, Ganondagan State Historic Site)
Vestments of the Word: European Book Culture and New World Bindings
On 19 April 1675, a small book was gifted to the library of the University of Edinburgh. Only 2.4 by 3 inches in size, the deceptively humble The Indian Primer is part of a larger group of missionary materials printed on the earliest press in North American, the so-called Cambridge press at Harvard College. Originally created to teach literacy to converted Native Americans so they could read the Bible, the abecedary in Wampanoag—one of the many Indigenous languages once spoken in New England—is an imminently important material artifact: it is both the only surviving copy of the reading manual and the only known example of seventeenth-century Indigenous book art. Sporting pale white buckskin covers artfully emblazoned with foliated designs and large strawberry ornaments, the extraordinary binding makes the Primer into a unique survivor. In their talk, Michael Galban and Steffi Dippold probe the materialities of the Primer’s binding that are charged with meaning. Focusing attention on leather, wood, and decoration through collaborations with bio-codicologists, conservators, and craftspeople, they trace how a binding can materialize interpretive paths to otherwise unrecorded Indigenous participation, expertise, and workmanship that challenge what we mean when we talk about the early American book.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81322391722
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2