Andrew Honey - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Andrew Honey

This paper describes the review and reinterpretation of a type of conservation treatment carried ... more This paper describes the review and reinterpretation of a type of conservation treatment carried out within the Conservation & Collection Care department of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The treatment is known as ‘fisherizing’ and is one approach to the housing of single-sheet material that has been adopted at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It is a system of binding modern papers of predominantly uniform format, typescripts for example, which are unsuitable for either fasciculing or other binding methods and which require more protection than that offered by archive folders. The technique was named after H.A.L. Fisher, a twentieth-century Oxford historian, whose papers were donated to the Bodleian Library in 1958. Fisherizing was developed between 1985 and 1987 when Fisher’s papers were treated. The technique has been used in the library over the past years and has recently been reviewed. The results of this review are presented here alongside further refinements which have been introduced to the technique. This work is particularly important for the Bodleian collection where the technique has been used extensively. Therefore assessing and refining it, is crucial for conservation management within the specific library. Moreover, the use of the technique outside the library makes this publication more important as not only does it communicate the assessment results but also it proposes improvements to the technique. The quality of this work is ensured by the large number of examples of the technique examined in one of the most important libraries in Britain both in terms of collection and in terms of quality of conservation work

Historical book binding techniques in conservation, 2016, ISBN 9783850287852, págs. 61-88, 2016

The Bodleian Library, Oxford has an important collection of eight blockbooks printed in the fifte... more The Bodleian Library, Oxford has an important collection of eight blockbooks printed in the fifteenth century. These volumes have been described as 'of exceptional importance for our early understanding of early woodcut printing and its function'. Blockbooks have an unusual codicological structure, where both the text and pictures were printed from wood blocks on one side of the paper only, then bound in codex form. Their unusual structure has posed particular problems for bookbinders, ancient and modern, and this paper will explore the repair and rebinding history of this collection. The individual volumes that comprise this collection entered the library in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from a range of private and institutional owners. Although none of these volumes now retain their original fifteenth-century bindings, glimpses of their original structure have been preserved and these have been noted and described since around 1700. Subsequent repair...

Andrew Honey, Book Conservator at the Bodleian, tells us of his excitement at discovering an orig... more Andrew Honey, Book Conservator at the Bodleian, tells us of his excitement at discovering an original Jane Austen pin on our Sir Charles Grandison manuscript, and what this, and other pins, tell us about their use.

Oxford University's Bodleian Library has recently conserved two twelfth-century composite man... more Oxford University's Bodleian Library has recently conserved two twelfth-century composite manuscripts containing works of St. Anselm: theologian, author and Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bodleian Library held a colloquium in April 2009 to coincide with the 900th anniversary of Anselm's death, following which two manuscripts were identified as being in particular need of conservation. Funding was offered from generous private donations to enable this work to be carried out. Although the manuscripts date from a similar period each has a complex and very different binding history creating individual conservation challenges. The earliest binding incorporates fragments of fourteenth-century polyphonic music, which have been partially removed in the past resulting in structural damage to the important fifteenth-century wooden inboard binding. In the second manuscript, the question of when and why the three texts were first brought together has significant implications for Anselmia...

Books from historic library collections often require protective boxes which typically increase t... more Books from historic library collections often require protective boxes which typically increase the required storage space. In some cases, extra storage space is unavailable and therefore good use of existing space is necessary. Deciding on the location of every boxed book on the available shelving is not an easy problem. Calculating the dimensions of the boxes when several hundreds or even thousands of books are considered is again time-consuming. Both of these problems are extremely difficult to solve manually. There are several techniques from the fields of statistics and computer science which can be used to assist with finding a solution. This paper investigates k-means clustering as a way to group books which can fit in a box of a specific size. It also investigates the First Fit Decreasing technique for arranging boxes optimally on shelves. The paper also includes a brief description of the boxes used at the library of the St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, alongside the racking storage system. It describes an application implementing the above techniques for the library's boxed manuscripts and presents some results confirming the usefulness of the application.

This paper presents a new method for the display of single sheet material within a library contex... more This paper presents a new method for the display of single sheet material within a library context and uses two recent exhibitions at the Bodleian Library, Oxford as case studies. Most previous library exhibitions have concentrated on bound books, reflecting the predominant format within their collections. These two recent exhibitions, however, have concentrated almost entirely on single sheet items and they have both presented display problems arising from the large numbers of items to be exhibited; restrictions imposed by space which was designed to display bound books; and the permanent mounting system used within the two displayed collections. A panel mounting system using polyester (Mylar) slings to support the items and their backing sheets was developed and this allowed the backing sheets to be safely overlapped and a larger number of items to be displayed. Both of these exhibitions raised issues about the display of single sheet items within a library context. The published display methods for single sheet items has largely been driven by the familiar museum and gallery print room storage system in the past but libraries have not tended to use these storage systems. These two case studies present a method of resolving the conflict that arises from the long term storage methods used at the Bodleian Library for single sheet material and their safe display and have implications for other museum, library and archive collections. Despite the focused subject, this methodology is important to other conservators preparing similar exhibits. It augments the exhibition of single-sheet library objects which so far has been difficult to display.

Studies in Conservation, 2010

This paper describes the conservation treatment at the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai of an ill... more This paper describes the conservation treatment at the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai of an illuminated manuscript preserved in an important but severely damaged sixteenth-century Greek-style Sinai binding. The conservation treatment aimed to restore functionality to this binding with minimum intervention enabling the important manuscript to travel to an exhibition. The repair techniques evolved during treatment as the two conservators studied and used the techniques of the original binder. The repair included the partial in situ re-sewing of the manuscript, working around and supplementing the original sewing, and reattaching the wooden bookboards. The primary endbands were repaired to preserve and support the unique secondary metal-thread endbands and a new method was devised to repair an interlaced clasp-strap. The planning, as well as the working methods and techniques described, highlight new avenues both for the conservation of Byzantine manuscripts and for future conservation at this important library. ÖZET Bu yazı, Sina Azize Katerina Manastırı'ndaki, bir tezhipli elyazmasının konservasyon çalışmalarını anlatmaktadır. Kitap, ciddi hasar görmüş ama önemli bir 16. yüzyıl Yunan tarzı Sina cildine sahiptir. Konservasyonun amacı bu cildin en az müdahaleyle işlevini tekrar kazanması ve böylece yazmanın bir sergiye yollanabilmesiydi. İki konservatör, kitabın mücellidinin tekniklerini inceleyip kullanırken onarım teknikleri de geliştirdiler. Onarım yazmanın kısmi in situ yeniden dikimini (özgün dikişin çevresinde çalışılıp desteklenmesi) ve cilt kapaklarına yeniden tutturulmasını kapsıyordu. Temel şirazeler korunarak onarıldı ve ikincil metal iplikli şirazelere destek oluşturuldu. İç içe geçen örgü şiraze onarımı için yeni bir yöntem geliştirildi. Anlatılan planlama ve çalışma yöntemleri hem Bizans yazmalarının konservasyonu hem de gelecekte bu önemli kütüphanedeki konservasyon çalışmaları için tutulacak yeni yolların altını çizmektedir.

The Paper Conservator, 2004

Clarkson, 'Housing single sheet material: The development of the fasciculing system at the Bodlei... more Clarkson, 'Housing single sheet material: The development of the fasciculing system at the Bodleian Library', The Paper Conservator 18 (1994) 40-48, and should be read in conjunction with it. I would like to thank Joan Lee and Alison McKay of the Bodleian Library and Christopher Clarkson who read and commented on drafts of this paper. 2 Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher (1865-1940), historian, statesman, and Warden of New College, Oxford. 3 The problems of earlier housing systems at the Bodleian Library and the development of the fascicule system are described by Lindsay and Clarkson 40-42. Guarding and filing is another method of housing single-sheet material, this has never been used at the Bodleian Library though. For a description of the technique, see Wardle, D.B., Document Repair (London: Society of Archivists, 1971) 47-54; and Jones, M., 'Guarding and filing-the assemblage and binding of miscellaneous documents', The Paper Conservator 2 (1977) 24-35. 4 This was first identified in 1983 in a meeting held between the Bodleian Library departments of Conservation and Western Manuscripts to review the first year of the fascicule system. The minutes of this meeting recall that 'collections of modern papers presented different problems, and it was felt that we need to look at alternative methods of protecting them in use by readers', 'Notes of an informal meeting between Western MSS, and Conservation staff', unpublished minutes, 23 Mar 1983. 5 Segal, J., 'The storage of single sheetsadapted from Chris Clarkson's notes', 5.

eprints.ouls.ox.ac.uk

This paper discusses the historic repair and reuse of wooden bookboards on Byzantine Greek-style ... more This paper discusses the historic repair and reuse of wooden bookboards on Byzantine Greek-style bookbindings in the library of the monastery of St Catherine, Sinai. It is based on a detailed condition survey of the monastery's manuscripts that also provided a comprehensive description of the materials and structures of these manuscripts. A total of 124 wooden boards with repairs to major splits was found on 101 manuscripts. These repaired boards have been categorised by damage to the boards, information about their repair techniques and materials and the time of repair. Finally it has been possible to compare those manuscripts with repaired boards to the rest of the collection and place the repairs into a wider context of eastern Mediterranean manuscript repair and rebinding. The study of early board repairs offers new approaches to the repair of split wooden bookboards by book conservators.

Oxford German Studies, 2017

This article presents the binding description for a manuscript acquired in 2016 by the Bodleian L... more This article presents the binding description for a manuscript acquired in 2016 by the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The manuscript has a late fifteenth-century binding sewn with a chainstitch structure and the article compares it to previously published examples, and describes the range of materials and techniques used by its binder.

This paper describes the review and reinterpretation of a type of conservation treatment carried ... more This paper describes the review and reinterpretation of a type of conservation treatment carried out within the Conservation & Collection Care department of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The treatment is known as ‘fisherizing’ and is one approach to the housing of single-sheet material that has been adopted at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It is a system of binding modern papers of predominantly uniform format, typescripts for example, which are unsuitable for either fasciculing or other binding methods and which require more protection than that offered by archive folders. The technique was named after H.A.L. Fisher, a twentieth-century Oxford historian, whose papers were donated to the Bodleian Library in 1958. Fisherizing was developed between 1985 and 1987 when Fisher’s papers were treated. The technique has been used in the library over the past years and has recently been reviewed. The results of this review are presented here alongside further refinements which have been introduced to the technique. This work is particularly important for the Bodleian collection where the technique has been used extensively. Therefore assessing and refining it, is crucial for conservation management within the specific library. Moreover, the use of the technique outside the library makes this publication more important as not only does it communicate the assessment results but also it proposes improvements to the technique. The quality of this work is ensured by the large number of examples of the technique examined in one of the most important libraries in Britain both in terms of collection and in terms of quality of conservation work

Historical book binding techniques in conservation, 2016, ISBN 9783850287852, págs. 61-88, 2016

The Bodleian Library, Oxford has an important collection of eight blockbooks printed in the fifte... more The Bodleian Library, Oxford has an important collection of eight blockbooks printed in the fifteenth century. These volumes have been described as 'of exceptional importance for our early understanding of early woodcut printing and its function'. Blockbooks have an unusual codicological structure, where both the text and pictures were printed from wood blocks on one side of the paper only, then bound in codex form. Their unusual structure has posed particular problems for bookbinders, ancient and modern, and this paper will explore the repair and rebinding history of this collection. The individual volumes that comprise this collection entered the library in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from a range of private and institutional owners. Although none of these volumes now retain their original fifteenth-century bindings, glimpses of their original structure have been preserved and these have been noted and described since around 1700. Subsequent repair...

Andrew Honey, Book Conservator at the Bodleian, tells us of his excitement at discovering an orig... more Andrew Honey, Book Conservator at the Bodleian, tells us of his excitement at discovering an original Jane Austen pin on our Sir Charles Grandison manuscript, and what this, and other pins, tell us about their use.

Oxford University's Bodleian Library has recently conserved two twelfth-century composite man... more Oxford University's Bodleian Library has recently conserved two twelfth-century composite manuscripts containing works of St. Anselm: theologian, author and Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bodleian Library held a colloquium in April 2009 to coincide with the 900th anniversary of Anselm's death, following which two manuscripts were identified as being in particular need of conservation. Funding was offered from generous private donations to enable this work to be carried out. Although the manuscripts date from a similar period each has a complex and very different binding history creating individual conservation challenges. The earliest binding incorporates fragments of fourteenth-century polyphonic music, which have been partially removed in the past resulting in structural damage to the important fifteenth-century wooden inboard binding. In the second manuscript, the question of when and why the three texts were first brought together has significant implications for Anselmia...

Books from historic library collections often require protective boxes which typically increase t... more Books from historic library collections often require protective boxes which typically increase the required storage space. In some cases, extra storage space is unavailable and therefore good use of existing space is necessary. Deciding on the location of every boxed book on the available shelving is not an easy problem. Calculating the dimensions of the boxes when several hundreds or even thousands of books are considered is again time-consuming. Both of these problems are extremely difficult to solve manually. There are several techniques from the fields of statistics and computer science which can be used to assist with finding a solution. This paper investigates k-means clustering as a way to group books which can fit in a box of a specific size. It also investigates the First Fit Decreasing technique for arranging boxes optimally on shelves. The paper also includes a brief description of the boxes used at the library of the St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, alongside the racking storage system. It describes an application implementing the above techniques for the library's boxed manuscripts and presents some results confirming the usefulness of the application.

This paper presents a new method for the display of single sheet material within a library contex... more This paper presents a new method for the display of single sheet material within a library context and uses two recent exhibitions at the Bodleian Library, Oxford as case studies. Most previous library exhibitions have concentrated on bound books, reflecting the predominant format within their collections. These two recent exhibitions, however, have concentrated almost entirely on single sheet items and they have both presented display problems arising from the large numbers of items to be exhibited; restrictions imposed by space which was designed to display bound books; and the permanent mounting system used within the two displayed collections. A panel mounting system using polyester (Mylar) slings to support the items and their backing sheets was developed and this allowed the backing sheets to be safely overlapped and a larger number of items to be displayed. Both of these exhibitions raised issues about the display of single sheet items within a library context. The published display methods for single sheet items has largely been driven by the familiar museum and gallery print room storage system in the past but libraries have not tended to use these storage systems. These two case studies present a method of resolving the conflict that arises from the long term storage methods used at the Bodleian Library for single sheet material and their safe display and have implications for other museum, library and archive collections. Despite the focused subject, this methodology is important to other conservators preparing similar exhibits. It augments the exhibition of single-sheet library objects which so far has been difficult to display.

Studies in Conservation, 2010

This paper describes the conservation treatment at the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai of an ill... more This paper describes the conservation treatment at the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai of an illuminated manuscript preserved in an important but severely damaged sixteenth-century Greek-style Sinai binding. The conservation treatment aimed to restore functionality to this binding with minimum intervention enabling the important manuscript to travel to an exhibition. The repair techniques evolved during treatment as the two conservators studied and used the techniques of the original binder. The repair included the partial in situ re-sewing of the manuscript, working around and supplementing the original sewing, and reattaching the wooden bookboards. The primary endbands were repaired to preserve and support the unique secondary metal-thread endbands and a new method was devised to repair an interlaced clasp-strap. The planning, as well as the working methods and techniques described, highlight new avenues both for the conservation of Byzantine manuscripts and for future conservation at this important library. ÖZET Bu yazı, Sina Azize Katerina Manastırı'ndaki, bir tezhipli elyazmasının konservasyon çalışmalarını anlatmaktadır. Kitap, ciddi hasar görmüş ama önemli bir 16. yüzyıl Yunan tarzı Sina cildine sahiptir. Konservasyonun amacı bu cildin en az müdahaleyle işlevini tekrar kazanması ve böylece yazmanın bir sergiye yollanabilmesiydi. İki konservatör, kitabın mücellidinin tekniklerini inceleyip kullanırken onarım teknikleri de geliştirdiler. Onarım yazmanın kısmi in situ yeniden dikimini (özgün dikişin çevresinde çalışılıp desteklenmesi) ve cilt kapaklarına yeniden tutturulmasını kapsıyordu. Temel şirazeler korunarak onarıldı ve ikincil metal iplikli şirazelere destek oluşturuldu. İç içe geçen örgü şiraze onarımı için yeni bir yöntem geliştirildi. Anlatılan planlama ve çalışma yöntemleri hem Bizans yazmalarının konservasyonu hem de gelecekte bu önemli kütüphanedeki konservasyon çalışmaları için tutulacak yeni yolların altını çizmektedir.

The Paper Conservator, 2004

Clarkson, 'Housing single sheet material: The development of the fasciculing system at the Bodlei... more Clarkson, 'Housing single sheet material: The development of the fasciculing system at the Bodleian Library', The Paper Conservator 18 (1994) 40-48, and should be read in conjunction with it. I would like to thank Joan Lee and Alison McKay of the Bodleian Library and Christopher Clarkson who read and commented on drafts of this paper. 2 Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher (1865-1940), historian, statesman, and Warden of New College, Oxford. 3 The problems of earlier housing systems at the Bodleian Library and the development of the fascicule system are described by Lindsay and Clarkson 40-42. Guarding and filing is another method of housing single-sheet material, this has never been used at the Bodleian Library though. For a description of the technique, see Wardle, D.B., Document Repair (London: Society of Archivists, 1971) 47-54; and Jones, M., 'Guarding and filing-the assemblage and binding of miscellaneous documents', The Paper Conservator 2 (1977) 24-35. 4 This was first identified in 1983 in a meeting held between the Bodleian Library departments of Conservation and Western Manuscripts to review the first year of the fascicule system. The minutes of this meeting recall that 'collections of modern papers presented different problems, and it was felt that we need to look at alternative methods of protecting them in use by readers', 'Notes of an informal meeting between Western MSS, and Conservation staff', unpublished minutes, 23 Mar 1983. 5 Segal, J., 'The storage of single sheetsadapted from Chris Clarkson's notes', 5.

eprints.ouls.ox.ac.uk

This paper discusses the historic repair and reuse of wooden bookboards on Byzantine Greek-style ... more This paper discusses the historic repair and reuse of wooden bookboards on Byzantine Greek-style bookbindings in the library of the monastery of St Catherine, Sinai. It is based on a detailed condition survey of the monastery's manuscripts that also provided a comprehensive description of the materials and structures of these manuscripts. A total of 124 wooden boards with repairs to major splits was found on 101 manuscripts. These repaired boards have been categorised by damage to the boards, information about their repair techniques and materials and the time of repair. Finally it has been possible to compare those manuscripts with repaired boards to the rest of the collection and place the repairs into a wider context of eastern Mediterranean manuscript repair and rebinding. The study of early board repairs offers new approaches to the repair of split wooden bookboards by book conservators.

Oxford German Studies, 2017

This article presents the binding description for a manuscript acquired in 2016 by the Bodleian L... more This article presents the binding description for a manuscript acquired in 2016 by the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The manuscript has a late fifteenth-century binding sewn with a chainstitch structure and the article compares it to previously published examples, and describes the range of materials and techniques used by its binder.