Vessel

Vessel is a juried traveling exhibition sponsored by the Guild of Bookworkers. The book as vessel inspires beautiful metaphor - a craft for traveling, a container, a holder, a receiver, a transporter. Across time and culture, the vessel is at the center of many ceremonies and rites of passage. Native American cultures regarded the vessel as a portal to a sacred realm. The book as craft is our vessel to sail the high seas, to hold our dearest memories, and to indicate the pulse of life. Guild of Book Workers members contributed works to interpret “vessel” as broadly or as narrowly as they wished.

This exhibition features approximately 50 works by Guild members. The RIT Cary Collection is the fourth venue on the exhibit's traveling schedule. Selected works  include fine and edition bindings, artist’s books, broadsides (letterpress printing, calligraphy, and decorative paper making), and historical binding models.

Lecture at the Cary to celebrate Vessel: Thursday, May 12, 2016, 5:30 p.m.
Art, Craft and Conservation: De-mystifying A Book Conservator
By Todd Pattison, Senior Book Conservator, Northeast Document Conservation Center

Todd will discuss his work as a book conservator and how it relates to research and teaching in the field of bibliophily. He will also highlight his artistic contribution to the Vessel exhibition, as well as those of some of his peers, who are also professional book conservators around the country.

Todd Pattison has worked on some of the most challenging book conservation projects at NEDCC, and has been with the Center for over 20 years. In addition, he spent two and a half years as the Collections Conservator at Harvard Library, supervising a lab that treats Harvard’s general collections. Todd has taught preservation courses at library schools in the U.S. and internationally, and he has a particular interest in the history and preservation of 19^th century publisher’s bindings. In the summer of 2014 he taught “American Publisher’s Bindings 1800-1900,” a one-week course at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) and the Chapter Chair of the New England Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers.