Traditions of Papermaking in the Islamic World
27 March 2015, The British Library, London, UK
Speakers
Timothy Barrett
Timothy Barrett is an associate professor in the University of Iowa Center for the Book and the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science in Iowa City, Iowa, USA. He received a bachelor’s degree in art communications from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA in 1973; and his career includes two years at Twinrocker Handmade Paper Inc. in Brookston, Indiana, USA; two years studying papermaking in Japan on Fulbright Fellowship; and two years of part-time study at Western Michigan University’s Department of Paper Science and Engineering. His many years of research on early European handmade papers have been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kress Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and, as of 2010, a MacArthur Fellowship.
Barrett is the author of two books, one website, seven videotapes, and thirty-six articles or book chapters on the history, techniques, and aesthetics of hand papermaking. He joined the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 1986, where he continues to oversee the Center’s paper facilities, paper research and production, and the papermaking curriculum. He was director of the Center between 1996 and 2002 and again became director in the autumn of 2012.
His primary research interests are in early European papermaking technology, the role of gelatine in paper permanence, and the aesthetics of paper. Specialised handmade papers produced by Barrett and his students are designed for use by conservators of rare books and works of art on paper, fine press printers, and book artists.
Jean-Louis Estéve
Born in 1948, lecturer at École Supérieure Estienne, Applied Arts & Design, (now retired) I am specialized in traditional printing techniques and book-making. I continue this practice (lead typogaphy, lithographie wood cutting and engaving) in my personal studio. I also worked as student with Professor François Déroche. My research field is based around islamic papers, from central Asia to Spain (751-1351). My approach to paper is historical but also practical, I try to make in my personal studio, authentic copies of historical papers for my own understanding, and try to explain my codicilogical observations.
Evyn Kropf
Evyn Kropf is the librarian for Near Eastern and religious studies and the curator of the Islamic manuscript collection at the University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA and her master’s degree in information science with a specialisation in library and information services from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she also completed coursework in Arabic historiography and directed readings in classical Arabic and Ottoman Turkish.
The foundations for her scholarly interest in the manuscript culture of the Islamic world were laid during the years she lived and studied the Arabic language in Amman, Jordan; and she has since trained in manuscript studies and book structures with Adam Gacek and Julia Miller. Her most valuable training in manuscript studies was obtained while serving as cataloguer for the University of Michigan Library’s project Collaboration in Cataloging: Islamic Manuscripts at Michigan (2009–2012), for which she led the descriptive effort that realised the detailed cataloguing of 904 manuscript codices from the Library’s Islamic manuscript collection.
Her research interests include Arabic palaeography and codicology with a focus on bookmaking (specifically writing materials and structural repairs); ownership, reading, and collecting practices; and the use of pictograms and other visual content in Sufistic cultures of knowledge transmission.
Falvio Marzo
Flavio Marzo was born in Susa near Turin (Italy). He now lives in London where he has been working for the British library since 2005 and became an ICON accredited conservator in 2012. He previously worked in prominent institutions such as the Vatican Library and the libraries of Queens and Magdalene Colleges in Oxford and also as private conservator/restorer in the Benedictine Monastery of Novalesa (Italy). He has also been involved in several conservation projects in Italy, Greece and Egypt as conservator, consultant and teacher .Since 2012 Flavio Marzo has been appointed Conservation Studio Manager for the Qatar Digitisation Project within the British Library/Qatar Foundation partnership. He is also author of a number of articles published on conservation journals.
Zoe Miller
Zoe Miller has worked as a Book Conservator for the British Library since 2004 after graduating from Camberwell with a MA degree in Conservation and following an internship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She has worked on a range of material during her time at the BL including Western and Eastern material both manuscript and printed, archival and bound. She takes a particular interest in the conservation of Eastern and Western binding structures.
Katharina Siedler
Ms Katharina Siedler earned a master’s degree in history and Eastern European studies from the Free University of Berlin in Berlin, Germany in 2005, and a master of fine arts degree in book arts from University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, USA in 2013. Between 2003 and 2010, she worked as a paper conservation technician, and from 2006 to 2009 as a production papermaker. From 2010 to 2013, she served as a graduate research assistant at the University of Iowa Center for the Book’s Research and Production Paper Facility under Timothy Barrett. In 2015, she opened her own studio for papermaking and book arts in Berlin.
Alexandra Soteriou
Starting in the mid 1970’s Soteriou underwent years of formal apprenticeships and lessons in hand papermaking, bookbinding, and restoration including an apprenticeship with master papermaker Douglass Howell, an apprenticeship at the Center for Book Arts in NY, and lessons with Deborah Evetts, of the Pierpont Morgan Library.
While she owned a small paper mill and book bindery in New Jersey, she lectured widely, wrote about paper, exhibited in, and curated paper exhibitions and was awarded grants from the NYC New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Fulbright Grant for research in India.
Soteriou’s three decades of involvement with multifaceted aspects of hand papermaking includes fieldwork in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Uzbekistan and Thailand, with a particular interest in traditions of Islamic artisans. Her award-winning book Gift of Conquerors, Papermaking in India is a recognized resource.