Posts by Kyle Clark

Welcome to the University of Michigan Library’s Book Arts Studio, a place for students, faculty, and the community to learn and practice the craft of letterpress printing, offering the opportunity to engage in other related activities, such as bookbinding and the book arts.

In March of 2020, COVID 19 brought the world to a halt leading to drastic changes in our everyday lives. While health concerns were at the forefront of the entire world, library staff sought ways in which to continue serving our constituents and engage with our local community. One bright spot in this transitional period was the shift to online book arts programming facilitated by University of Michigan Library’s Jamie Vander Broek. In the summer of 2020, the Book Arts Studio began developing a model for continuing its operations through a series of online lectures and workshops.

The Renaissance and Medieval Manuscript Collection belonging to the University of Michigan Library consists of an impressive array of medieval and early modern manuscripts from multiple cultures and languages, including Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Ethiopian. Fortunately, many of the manuscripts within this collection have largely been left in their original bindings and most damages have gone untreated.

The University of Michigan Library and the Detroit Institute of Arts have recently collaborated in a project to produce x-ray images of the hidden structure inside a fourteenth-century Greek manuscript binding.