Provider: Ministry of Culture
Programme: National and Cultural Identity Applied Research and Development Programme - NAKI II
Implementation period: 01.03.2020 - 31.12.2022
Recipient/coordinator: Faculty of Restoration, University of Pardubice
Responsible Principal Investigator of the beneficiary/coordinator Faculty of Restoration - Atelier of Paper, Bookbinding and Document Restoration
Project partner: The North Bohemian Museum in Liberec
Principal Investigator: Mgr. BcA. Radomír Slovik
Project link: Blind Witnesses Project
The project aims and outputs respond to the necessary need for systematic research and registration of historical bookbindings as a hitherto neglected sphere of book culture in the Czech lands. The project is based on the possibilities of interdisciplinary cooperation in research, preservation, and presentation of specific values of cultural heritage. The research problem concerns the history of the bookbinding created in the Czech lands in the 16th century as one of the essential segments of book culture. The project aims at documentation, research and presentation of a specific group of cultural heritage monuments such as historical bookbindings. All the objectives of the project are closely interlinked and pursue only one aim: to create, in the form of a database, a specialised map and a certified methodology, a professional platform/basis for joint scientific activity for research on historical bookbinding.
Project outputs:
1. The database of blind-printed decoration of Renaissance bindings will serve for systematic scientific registration of bookbinding tools used for blind-printing (wheel, roller, plate). Only this critical record will create the proper preconditions for compiling a history of bookbinding and book culture in general. Thus, the Czech Republic will catch up with the fifty-year lag behind foreign activities and create a basis for the future of a continuous record of book decoration. Database of blind-printed decoration
2. Specialized map of bookbinders and anonymous bookbinding workshops in the Czech lands of the 16th century will provide information about the craft background, religious profile, mentality and strength of reading communities in regions and at the level of cultural and political centers. The map will be electronically linked to the map of domestic printers currently being addressed by NAKI DG16P02HO15 (2016-2020) Knihoveda.cz . Both approaches to the two maps (partial and joint) will ensure that book culture is perceived as an interdisciplinary issue in a much more authentic way than before. Map of 16th century bookbinding workshops
3. Certified methodology of blind embellishment of bindings will solve the problem of the current non-unified description of blind embellishment of books. In addition to establishing a procedure for the description and documentation of the binding decoration itself, it will offer a unified Czech-German terminology, which will translate into the improvement of the retrospective national bibliography and the establishment of a specific research profession, which has been missing in the Czech Republic for at least 50 years. Methodology | Blind Witnesses
4. The exhibition with a critical catalogue will introduce the general public to the technological and artistic background of historical bookbinding as well as its place in the development of reading and the intellectualization of society as a whole. Special attention will be paid to Prof. Dr. Bohumil Nusek, CSc., whose bindings (frottage) of bookbinding tools will fill the database. The exhibition was realized by the project partner. Blind Witnesses - The North Bohemian Museum in Liberec
