This year’s Printer-in-Residence programme will feature Peter Vangioni, curator at Christchurch Art Gallery and owner-operator of Kowhai Press. He will be printing text and images by the Port Chalmers based artist/lyricist and sound artist, Michael Morley. The work to be produced is tentatively titled XXXXXWords.

Stop by regularly to observe the progress.

Venue: Otakou Press, 1st floor Central University Library

Hours: Variable, but the printer welcomes visitors who wish to learn more about the project or the printing process.

For further enquiries, please contact Dr Donald Kerr, Special Collections, University of Otago.
Email: Donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz
Phone: (03)-479-8330

The 10th anniversary Australasian Rare Books Summer School will be held 26-30 January 2015 in Wellington, New Zealand. The event is hosted by Victoria University of Wellington and the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand.

Three exciting courses are on offer, each of which runs for five full days:

History of Cartography/Maps
Tutor: Julie-Sweetkind Singer, Stanford University, USA

Geographic Information Systems for Digital Humanities
Tutor: Ian Gregory, Lancaster University, UK

Artistic Printing
Tutors: Marty Vreede, Quay School of the Arts, Whanganui and Sydney Shep, Wai-te-ata Press, Victoria University of Wellington

The cost of each five-day course is NZD $800 + gst per person. Places are strictly limited.

For more details about RBSS 2015 visit http://wtap.vuw.ac.nz/wordpress/digital-history/events/rare-books-summer-school/

If you would like to attend, please visit http://bit.ly/rbss2015 to express your interest, and a member of the RBSS team will contact you with more information.

Italy – what dreams and romantic longings the name conjures up. Florence, Venice, Rome – landmarks of European history and civilization. The country of Caesar, Cicero, Horace, and Virgil: the land which gave birth to Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso. The list would be endless if it also encompassed ‘modern’ day celebrities such as Giuseppe Verdi, Enrico Fermi, Sofia Loren, Giorgio Armani, Dino Zoff (considered the best goalkeeper in the history of football), and the controversial Silvio Berlusconi. Renowned for its architecture, its complex historical past, its literature, fashion, and cuisine, Italy is now sub-divided into 20 regions, where most speak Italian (a Florentine variety of Tuscan).

 An exhibition entitled Viva l’Italia. A Regional Romp through Italy will start on 11 June 2014 at the de Beer Gallery, Special Collections, University of Otago. The exhibition is constructed around images of Italian cities from a seventeenth-century copy of Pietro Bertelli’s Theatro delle Citta d’Italia (1629). By utilising these images, the viewer ‘romps’ through the various regions of the country cabinet by cabinet, from Piedmont in the north, to Puglia in the southeast, Sardinia in the west, and Sicily in the southwest. The Republic (formed in 1946) encompasses some 301,338 kilometres.

Although by necessity selective, the exhibition will display some wonderful books, primarily from the collections of Esmond de Beer and Charles Brasch, who both thoroughly enjoyed what Italy offered to the world. Notable items will include: William Thomas’ The Historie of Italie (1549); Pietro Bertelli’s Theatro delle Citta d’Italia(1629); Thomas Martyn’s The Gentleman’s Guide in his Tour through Italy (1787); Alexandre de Rogissart’s Les Delices de l’Italie (1706); Henry Kipping’s Antiquitatum Romanarum, Libri Quatuor [(1713); and Jean-Jacques Boissard’s Pars Romanae Urbis Topographiae & Antiquitatum (1597). Modern publications such as D. H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia (1921) and Samuel Butler’s Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (1923) also feature. Interspersed are Italian recipes, carnival characters, and works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

The exhibition will run to 5 September 2014

Venue: de Beer Gallery, Special Collections, 1^st floor Central University Library

Hours: 8.30 to 5.00 Monday to Friday

For further enquiries, please contact Dr Donald Kerr, Special Collections, University of Otago.
Email: Donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz
Phone: (03)-479-8330

Nicolas Barker generously agreed to share the text of his talk to the Centre for the Book, for those who were unable to attend.  His rich experience attests to the power of books, and to the deep personal connections that books can represent.  Enjoy, and many thanks to Nicolas for his generosity and for a very enjoyable talk.

Click on the link below to read the full text.
50_Years_On

The Centre for the Book is delighted to be able to host Nicolas Barker and his wife Joanna at the end of May. Nicolas has enjoyed vast experience in all aspects of book production, curation and scholarship, and will deliver a talk entitled, “Fifty Years On: The Book Collector and ‘Printing and the Mind of Man’.”  His talk will be held on Thursday, 29 May at 5:30 pm in Archway 2.  We hope you will all be able to join us.

Nicolas Barker began writing for The Book Collector in 1958, and he has been editor since 1965. In 1947 he was fortunate enough to inherit the fine Cope & Hopkinson Albion press used by C.H. St John Hornby at the Ashendene Press. With it he printed a number of books, including Frances Cornford’s last book of poems, On a Calm Shore (1960). Between 1958 and 1976 he was production manager or director of, successively, Rupert Hart-Davis, Macmillan and Oxford University Press, moving to become Head of Conservation at the still new British Library in 1976. He retired in 1992 to become libraries adviser to the National Trust and the House of Commons. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and is on the Advisory Board of the Science Museum. He is also a Director of Print Quarterly. He has written or edited over twenty books on typography, calligraphy, art history and the history of books and libraries, among them the perennial ABC for Book Collectors.

Nicolas Barker’s talk will focus on the important and enduring role of the 1963 catalogue for the printing exhibits held in London by the International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition. The catalogue’s full name–“Catalogue of a display of printing mechanisms and printed materials arranged to illustrate the history of Western civilization and the means of the multiplication of literary texts since the 15th century, organised in connection with the eleventh International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition, under the title Printing and the Mind of Man, assembled at the British Museum and at Earls Court, London, 16-27 July 1963”–is usually shortened to “Printing and the Mind of Man.” Originally printed by Oxford University Press, the publication later developed into a book-length survey of printed materials and their historical role in spreading knowledge, developing Western civilization and impacting human thought over many years.

Monday 7 April, 9:30 am–1 pm
Half-Day Free Workshop: Introduction to Descriptive and Analytical Bibliography

Who: Dr. Shef Rogers, co-director of the Centre for the Book and Sr.
Lecturer in the Department of English and Linguistics
When: 9:30am-1:00pm, Monday 7 April
Where: Central Library, Cen 1 (first floor, east end)

Morning workshop providing an overview of all aspects of how to
interpret and record information about historical books as physical
objects.  The program will be divided into four half-hour sessions
with a tea break in the middle at 11 and will cover the idea of the
printing forme, paper and imposition, some distinguishing features of
different European practices, and how to read a collation formula.  We
will also discuss binding and provenance information.  There will be a
final fifth session for questions.  Each session will involve the
participants in some interpretative task and all handouts and morning
tea will be provided by the Centre for the Book.

Come learn how to really look at a book, from the inside out.

At the moment, this workshop is full.  If you are interested in being put on a waiting list or possibly attending a second workshop a few weeks later, please email Shef Rogers (shef.rogers@otago.ac.nz).

The Centre is pleased to welcome Dr. Emma Smith of Oxford University to talk about her research on readers of the First Folio.  Because her book is an especially literary one, her talk will be held at 4 pm on Friday in Burns 4, in conjunction with the Department of English’s regular weekly research seminar.  All are welcome.

The Centre is pleased to welcome Andrew Carpenter, Emeritus Professor of Literature at University College Dublin.  Prof. Carpenter will present a seminar on “Verse Chapbooks in the Irish Provinces, 1770-1800: Textual Transmission, Printing and Circulation,” a subject on which he has worked extensively as part of his work in editing Verse in English from Eighteenth Century Ireland (Cork University Press, 1998) and other projects.  The seminar will take place on Tuesday, 18 March at 4 pm in Central Library Seminar Room 3 on the first floor.  Drinks and nibbles will accompany his talk.

The Irish Studies Centre is delighted to welcome Andrew Carpenter, Emeritus Professor of University College Dublin, for a talk entitled, “Fighting for Readers: Swift’s Dublin Publishers in the 1750s.”  The talk will take place at 5:30 pm, in Burns 4, on Monday, 17 March.  Professor Carpenter will also give a Centre for the Book talk the following day.

Irish Studies St Patrick’s Day ePoster 14

The Centre for the Book at Otago Symposium 2014

Call for Papers

 ‘Against the Odds: the Editing, Design and Production of Books’

 The Centre for the Book at the University of Otago is now calling for papers for their annual symposium, which will be held in conjunction with the Dunedin School of Art ‘Art and Book’ Symposium on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 October 2014.

Books are created by the combined efforts of authors, editors, production managers, designers, and sales managers. Illustrators are often included, greatly enhancing the desired result, which is to ‘transmit the message in the best possible way.’

 We will consider papers of 20 minute duration on the following:

•  Book Editing – the preparation of the content of the book (working with the author; the manuscript; concept design and production)
• Book Design – conception planning and specifying the physical and visual attributes of the book (illustrations? typography? What type and how many pages? Who is the market?)
• Book Production – execution, scheduling, co-ordinating processes

A panel discussion is also planned.  

As has become a Centre for the Book at Otago tradition, a free public lecture will be given in the Dunningham Room, 4^th floor, Dunedin Public Library, on Thursday 16 October 2014. The speaker will be confirmed later, as will details on the times and venue.   

 For further information, please contact: Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian,Donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz ; Noel Waite, Applied Sciences, Otago noel.waite@otago.ac.nz; Shef Rogers, English and Linguistics Department, Otago shef.rogers@otago.ac.nz. 

**

There are real synergies between the Dunedin School of Art ‘ART AND BOOK’ Symposium and the Centre for the Book at Otago. We not only look forward to improving networks and collaboration, but also formulating an exciting programme for all. The artists are not forgotten. Those interested in taking part in the exhibition at the Dunedin School of Art Gallery, which runs from 13-24 October, or giving papers specifically for the ‘Art and Book’ symposium at the Dunedin School of Art on Friday 17 October, please contact Peter Stupples peter.stupples@op.ac.nz These two events support the Dunedin City Council’s bid to establish Dunedin as a UNESCO City of Literature.