Lecture 1 - Andrew Honey

Andrew Honey, Book Conservator at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Overview

This talk will discuss the paper faults found in copies of the First Folio at the Bodleian and the Folger Shakespeare Library and the implications these may have for our understanding of the working practices of paper-mills and early print shops. It will explore the different types of paper faults found in seventeenth-century paper and identify their causes, and explain how damaged and flawed paper was used both as a packing material for the transport of paper and after it had arrived at stationer’s and printer’s shops. It will explore how early users may have viewed these ‘otherwise naughty sheets’ and use early accounts of printing and papermaking to test whether the evidence from surviving paper accords with these published accounts. Finally the talk will look at the implications that these faults pose for conservators and librarians today.

About the speaker

Andrew Honey is a Book Conservator at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. He graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 1994 with a BA (Hons) in Paper Conservation and studied the conservation of rare books and manuscripts at West Dean College under Chris Clarkson from 1995-1997. He was a visiting research fellow at the Ligatus Research Unit, University of the Arts London from 2005-2010 and recently researched the paper and bindings of Jane Austen’s fiction manuscripts (www.janeausten.ac.uk). He received a Bibliographical Society minor grant and Clare Hampson Scholarship Fund award for research at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington in 2013.