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Hirst to Attend Rare Book School

We are pleased to announce that Donna Hirst, curator of the John Martin Rare Book Room, has been accepted to the very prestigious Rare Book School located on the University of Virginia campus.  She will attend the week-long class, Printed Books to 1800: Description & Analysis, where she will learn more about the physical aspects of books from the hand-press period. The course will cover such things as the identification and description of paper (laid vs. wove, watermarks); typography (type sizes and styles); letterpress printing; illustration processes (relief, intaglio); binding materials (leather, parchment, paper) and styles (dating and localizing bindings. The instructor, David Whitesell, is Curator of Books at the American Antiquarian Society. Previously, he was rare book cataloger at the Houghton Library, Harvard University and was in the antiquarian book trade.