With its iconic brown leather overbands and white crossed lacings, the Italian archival, or stationery, bookbinding style spread throughout Europe along with the Italian method of business record keeping. Over the past ten years, my research of Italian archival bookbindings at Harvard has only scratched the surface. At the American Academy, I will visit and document the vast collections of archival bindings in Rome. Through a methodical investigation and documentation of Italian archival bookbinding features, I will explore the origin, evolution, and transmission of this binding style. Through reverse engineering, I will construct historical bookbinding facsimiles, as well as the lacing patterns found on the covers. My goal is to create a foundational work that will allow custodians to better understand their collections and to provide a reference resource for colleagues in allied fields.

The photograph of Katherine L. Beaty was taken by Steph Stevens.