Roger Powell, the Complete Binder

Roger Powell, the Complete Binder The modern book conservation movement is indebted to the creativity and sensitivity of Roger Powell who permitted historical and technical observation to guide his craft of book making and restoration. Instead of imposing upon mediaeval book modern techniques, he, more than anyone else, practised the observation of books as material objects and how they functioned in order to inform the methods of restoration. The essays in this volume are not only about Roger Powell and his craft, but also as historical studies in the history of bookmaking a tribute to his insatiable curiosity about how books work. The Complete Binder is a tribute to his contribution to the craft and his continuing influence: Ann Donnelly and Peter Waters remember him as they knew him in the family and as a friend and colleague. An annotated bibliography of the works by and about Roger Powell has been prepared by one of his students, Christopher Clarkson. Another student Anthony G. Cains describes his innovation in manuscript conservation, especially the early Irish manuscripts repaired and bound between 1953 and 1981. Addressing an important question for the conservator, Don Etherington attempts to mark the distinctions between trade and craft. There follows a series of important contributions to the history of bookmaking, so essential in the Powell view of thoughtful conservation: from wooden boards to Armenian manuscripts, from pigments to quire tackets, sewing techniques to animal species in parchment making, from pamphlet binding to deceptive seventheent-century English bookbinding practices. The whole has been wrapped in a significant essay by Guy Petherbridge who examines the world and time into which Roger Powell came and how he left the world of conservation and bookbinding forever changed. [A survey of the life of the most significant binding conservator who raised the benchmark for the profession to a new

Roger Powell, the Complete Binder