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The Hand Decays, the Writing Remains: Byzantine Scribes and Their Manuscripts

Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann 

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This scholarly book delves into the intricate world of Byzantine scribes and the manuscripts they meticulously created. It investigates the social, cultural, and religious contexts that shaped the lives and works of these scribes, who played a crucial role in preserving the literary and theological heritage of Classical Greece and the Byzantine Empire. Through an in-depth analysis of various manuscripts, the book sheds light on the scribal practices, calligraphic styles, and the materials used in manuscript production. It also explores the transmission of texts, the influence of patronage, and the interaction between scribes and their contemporary intellectual milieus. This comprehensive study is a valuable resource for academics, historians, biblical scholars, and anyone interested in the legacy of Byzantine literary culture.

 

Dr. Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann is a specialist in Greek paleography and Byzantine manuscripts. She is working as an independent scholar and has published numerous articles in scholarly journals. She is the author of catalogues of Greek manuscripts in American collections, including those of Brown, Columbia, and Harvard Universities, the University of Michigan, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Morgan Library & Museum. She resides in Glenmont, N.Y. and Washington, D.C. Publication is expected in October 2025.

 

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A Printer with My Hands: The Life and Work of Carl P. Rollins

Katherine M. Ruffin

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From the Introduction: "As a member of a network of printers, designers, and bibliophiles associated with the “Renaissance in American Printing,” Carl Purington Rollins (1880–1960) helped transform graphic design and bibliographic studies in the United States. By applying the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement and design principles based on historical precedents to contemporary books and ephemera, this group of practitioners influenced the appearance of printed materials in twentieth-century America. This survey of the life and work of Rollins tells the story of the presses and collaborations with which he was involved."

 

Ruffin is Director of the Book Studies Program and a Lecturer in Art at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. In addition to managing the college’s Book Arts Lab and the Paper-making Studio, she directs the activities of the Annis Press, the lab’s imprint. Katherine also teaches the history of the book at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, and with John Kristensen of Firefly Press, she teaches a class on the History of 19th and 20th Century Typography and Printing at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Publication is expected in October 2025.

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A Global Exploration of Birch Bark Books and Manuscripts

Marieka Kaye  •  Oa Sjoblom

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Contributing authors

Kelly Church, Mary Hamilton French, Crystal Maitland,

Blaire Morseau, and Radha Pandey

 

The need to learn more about the history and material technology of birch bark in bookmaking arose when two conservators, Oa Sjoblom and Marieka Kaye, received damaged copies of Simon Pokagon’s (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) birch bark books, The Red Man’s Greeting (1893) and The Red Man’s Rebuke (1893), at the Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard Library, and the conservation lab at the University of Michigan Library, respectively. These small and delicate books, letterpress printed on the bark of the North American paper birch and sold at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, are frequently studied for their importance to Indigenous book history and the strong statements that Pokagon made, advocating for the rights of Indigenous communities. The damage found in the books made them unsafe to handle and repair was required to continue allowing use. Conversations with experts in related disciplines and current Indigenous artists working with birch bark were a vital part of these treatments and led to collaborative projects. For this essay, they interviewed Indigenous birch bark artists Kelly Church and Devon Kicknosway, and learned about how birch bark was harvested and prepared by the Anishinaabe.

 

Sjoblom and Kaye’s original focus for this research was North American birch bark books. These artifacts have been pillaged and pulled from their communities, and now is the time to focus on returning them, with respect for their true homes. According to Morseau, the descendants of the creators of these birch bark narratives are uniquely equipped to understand and preserve them. Speaking with conservators who had worked with these books, including Maitland and French, Sjoblom and Kaye were struck by the similarities and differences and felt their research would benefit from expanding their focus.

 

The global use of the material is the focus of this book, providing pathways to explore the similarities and differences in how birch bark has been used for books and manuscripts across the world in very different times. In our attempt to include contemporary artists in our discussion, we also stretch outside birch to include Radha Pandey’s study of the use of sanchi bark in India for books and manuscripts through her interview with artist Mridu Bora. This type of bark is harvested and prepared in much the same way as birch bark and reveals yet another dimension to the way bark has been used in the history of written culture. Publication is expected in October 2025.

 

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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 early Autumn 2025. 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 and writing 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." Publication is expected in March 2026.

  

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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).