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Ethiopian Bookbinding Tradition

Bill Hanscom

 

The history of the codex in the Ethiopian highlands stretches back over a millennium to the earliest centuries of the now-ubiquitous book form. The legacy of Ethiopia’s bound manuscript tradition – one of the longest continuously practiced in the world – has been carried forward by countless scribes, passing their skills down through generation after generation. This history is evident not only in the hundreds of thousands of bound manuscripts that survive, many still in active use, but also in those still being produced today. Ethiopian Bookbinding Tradition is the first major work to detail and describe this tradition and the practices of the Ethiopian scribal bound book, providing a comprehensive technical study of its materials, structures, and techniques. It gathers and synthesizes the significant but dispersed and often inaccessible body of literature on the subject with further observations and analysis provided by the author. Through in-depth discussion and extensive illustrations, this book meets the long-overdue need to bring Ethiopian bookbinding into the spotlight as a significant tradition in its own right and to firmly establish it within the larger history of bookbinding. Publication is expected in February 2026.

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The Typefounder's Hand Mould

R. Stanley Nelson

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This long-awaited book, by the acknowledged expert on the subject, R. Stanley "Stan" Nelson, will be published in March 2026. Nelson is Curator Emeritus at the NMAH, Graphic Arts Division, where for decades, he gave typecasting demonstrations to museum goers. He soon began taking orders to make replica hand moulds for collections around the world. And it is fitting that he should write this book, which covers not only the history of the typemould, focusing on moulds from European collections, such as Museum of Plantin-Moretus, but Nelson also gives instructions about how to make a typemould.

 

"To some, typefounding may seem an unusually esoteric subject but consider that moveable type was the foundation for the success of Gutenberg’s integrated process for the mass production of books using movable letters. It was the typemould that made accurate and efficient types both possible and economical. When considering the entire subject of printing history, typefounding represents an essential element that is worthy of much more attention than it has received. Thus this book."

  

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From Jikji to Gutenberg: The Origins of Book Printing from Moveable Metal Type

Cathleen A. Baker and Randy Silverman, eds.

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From Jikji to Gutenberg: The Origins of Book Printing from Moveable Metal Type represents a preliminary investigation into the birth of metal type and the first books printed from it in both the Eastern and the Western hemispheres. Whether the page you are reading is ink on paper or pixels on a screen, the global origins that led to these technological communications have impacted us all. When asked who was “first book printer,” people in the West usually answer Johannes Gutenberg, who printed the Gutenberg Bible in Mainz, Germany, in about 1454/55. And while his beautiful 42-line Bible is an incredible masterwork and a milestone among Western achievements, most grade-school children in South Korea can tell you that the Buddhist text, commonly referred to as Jikji, was printed from movable metal type by monks in July 1377! (Jikji, short for Baegun hwasang chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol [Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings], was printed the old Heungdeok-sa temple in Cheongju city: https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/baegun-hwasang-chorok-buljo-jikji-simche-yojeol-volii-second-volume-anthology-great-buddhist-priests.)

           

In 2001 in recognition of this technological achievement, UNESCO inscribed both Jikji and Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible on its Memory of the World International Register, forever bookending these two monuments of printing history. That so little is known about the origin story of these books is surprising and inspired the collaboration of members of the From Jikji to Gutenberg Project, formed in early 2020, to better understand what can be known of their creation. After nearly six years of discussion and collaboration, we offer this book as an introductory assessment of the surviving evidence surrounding humanity’s shared aspiration to print and publish books.

           

From Jikji to Gutenberg features thirty-two essays by thirty-nine international authors who represent diverse areas of expertise – history, material culture, early craft practices, technological methodologies, conservation, and scientific analyses. These essays benefited by the relaxation of the boundaries between those disciplines in order to share what we know about our own specialization, language, and culture to better understand what we don’t know.

           

The book is edited by Randy Silverman, Head of Preservation, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, and Cathleen A. Baker, retired University of Michigan Library Paper and Book Conservator, scholar/author and book-arts practitioner, as well as proprietor of The Legacy Press. Silverman was instrumental in securing funding to support the work of the Project, which in addition to this book, as the 650th anniversary of the publication of Jikji approaches, will include an online exhibit designed to summarize the Project’s scholarship for a broad, nontechnical audience, as well as an illustrated children’s book to encourage young readers to experience new and fantastic worlds, and to introduce them to the joys of scholarly investigation and craft practices. Publication is expected in Spring 2026.

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In addition to the above titles, The Legacy Press will be publishing two more titles in 2026. Keep watching this space! These new titles will be last new ones that will appear under my imprint. However, The Legacy Press will continue to issue reprints and new editions of previously published books, and Oak Knoll will continue to distribute The Legacy Press books. 

 

I thank everyone – authors, editors, customers, and donors – for supporting the work of The Legacy Press since it began publishing in 1997, and I hope you will keep in touch over the coming years. Once these new titles are at the printer, I will continue my research into the earliest Western-made wove papers in order to write a book on the subject (which may bring The Legacy Press out of retirement).