April 2013 Dinner Meeting

Speaker: Julia Miller

“Not Just Another Beautiful Book: American Scaleboard Bindings”

Julia Miller will discuss the use of thin wooden boards (scaleboard or scabboard) as covers on early American imprints dating from as early as 1682; the use of scaleboard continued until the 1840's.  Numerous examples of these bindings survive in public and private collections, but to date very little effort has been made to study or describe them.  Ms. Miller has published several short articles on the topic and recently published a typology of American scaleboard bindings in Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the the History of Bookbinding, published by the Legacy Press. Julia Miller has been a rare book conservator for over thirty years and now spends most of her time studying, teaching and writing about structure, materials and decoration of historical bindings.  She is the author of Books will Speak Plain - A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings published by The Legacy Press in 2010.

Union League, 65 W. Jackson, Chicago. Timing: spirits at 5:00, dinner at 6:00, program at 7:30.