Bookbindings Academy 2026
Bookbindings Academy is an annual, free online event to share the results of bookbindings research with an international audience.
The Belgian-Dutch Bookbindings Society (Belgisch-Nederlands Boekbandengenootschap) and the Consortium for European Research Libraries (CERL) cordially invite anyone with an interest in bookbindings to attend two new sessions, this year on 16 January and 13 February 2026 (both at 15.00h CET).
Bookbindings Academy offers a platform to share recent research results, or to give important research extra attention. Ideally, each session consists of two 45-minute presentations on bookbindings. The topics can range from medieval bookbindings to innovating 21st-century binding techniques, from anonymous bookbinders at 19th-century book publishers to world famous bookbinders, and from book historians’ legacies in the field of bookbindings research to presentations on bookbindings fashions through the ages.
The goals of Bookbindings Academy are to share knowledge on bookbindings internationally and to create more possibilities for future international collaboration to increase that knowledge. The Bookbindings Academy is an annual event, and warmly invites researchers to contact us when they have interesting research to present.
After the success for the first Bookbindings Academy in 2025, we are very happy to present the second set of two sessions.
Programme
Friday 16 January 2026
- MITCHEL GUNDRUM (Huntington Library, Pasadena) – ‘In secret and at high speed’: Anselme Faust’s 1612 Beschrijvinghe/Prescription, Europe’s Earliest Bookbinding Manual
- Abstract: Prepared by the German bookbinder Anshelmus Faust for the monks of St. Bernard’s Abbey in Antwerp in 1612, Beschrijvinghe des Boeckbinders Handwerck/Prescription de la Manifacture des Relieurs is the earliest known manual on European bookbinding methods. Translation of the tools, materials, tools, techniques, and preparations described in Faust’s manuscript will provide bookbinders, print historians, curators, and conservators with a critical firsthand perspective on 16th- and 17th-century bookbinding traditions and consequently help to contextualize the development of book production across Europe in the early modern era.
- DAPHNE WOUTS (Leiden University) – A special bookbinding by Louis Elzevier in the town library of Enkhuizen (Netherlands): the presentation copies of Martinus Smetius’ Inscriptionum liber (1588)
- Abstract: In Enkhuizen, a city located in the province of North Holland, a seventeenth-century town library is preserved in the Westerkerk. The history of this library was the subject of the dissertation of Daphne Wouts. She also compiled a catalogue of the collection, for which she studied all the books from the library’s holdings. In this presentation, Daphne will talk about one specific book from the collection: Martinus Smetius’ Inscriptionum liber (Leiden: Franciscus Raphelengius, 1588). This book is one of fifteen presentation copies with a bookbinding by Louis Elzevier. Daphne will tell the story behind this binding, which is also the subject of an article that will be published in the yearbook of the Dutch Society of Bibliophiles.
Friday 13 February 2026
- KATELL LAVÉANT (Allard Pierson, Amsterdam) and MALCOLM WALSBY (ENSIBB, Lyon) – Bookbindings in Two Sixteenth-Century Private ‘Dutch’ Libraries: From Local Logics to Personal Choices
- Abstract: coming soon
- EDWIN BLOEMSAAT – On painted parchment book bindings
- Abstract: coming soon
We hope to welcome you all on 16 January and 13 February 2026 for the Bookbindings Academy part two!
Registration
Participation in the Bookbindings Academy is free, but registration is recommended. Upon registration you will receive a Zoom-link that will take you to the presentations. The online sessions will open shortly before 15.00h CET.
Interested? Please register by following the link to the registration form, and check the boxes of the sessions you would like to attend.