Events
Swiss Anabaptist Devotional Bookbinding Features in Early America and Europe
Virtual lecture on Zoom | Thursday, September 14, 2023 | 1:00 p.m. EDT
Pennsylvania Anabaptist bindings in the collection of Muddy Creek Farm Library. Photo by the presenters.
The Anabaptist community in early America created and used devotionals with bookbinding features not commonly seen outside that community. This talk will explore those structural and decorative binding features, while placing these devotionals in a context of European Swiss Anabaptist books, and touching on the ways Anabaptists used devotionals in their community life.
Click here to book the online lecture, which is organized by Bainbridge Conservation of London.
Presenters:
Alexander L. Ames
Alexander L. Ames is Director of Outreach & Engagement at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, where he oversees the Rosenbach’s exhibitions, historic house tours, as well as online and in-person public programs. He holds an M.A. in American material culture from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware (where he studied book history under his thesis adviser Consuela Metzger), and a Ph.D. in history and museum studies from the University of Delaware. He is the author of The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania (Penn State Press, 2020).
Erin Hammeke
Erin Hammeke is a Senior Conservator for Special Collections at Duke University Libraries. She received her MSLIS and Certificate of Advanced Study in the Conservation of Library and Archives Materials from the Kilgarlin Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She also earned a BA in Art History and Fine Art with an emphasis on sculpture and metalsmithing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Erin did her graduate internship in rare book conservation at the Weissman Preservation Center at Harvard University and has also held positions and internships in conservation at the Pinos y Serriera Archives, Vilassar de Dalt, Spain; the Milwaukee Art Museum; and the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Consuela (Chela) Metzger
Chela Metzger is currently working as Head, UCLA Library Preservation & Conservation Center. She is a book conservator, bookbinder, librarian, and occasional bookbinding historian, with long term interests in the histories of bound record-keeping structures. She fell in love with Anabaptist Devotionals while living in the Delaware Valley and being exposed to Anabaptist books and Anabaptist history in America and Europe.
The Denig Manuscript Project: Art Making in the Early
American Borderlands
Friday, May 12, 2023 | 9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. | Winterthur Museum, Garden, & Library
Early in 2020, Winterthur received the gift of an extraordinary leather-bound manuscript made by Ludwig Denig (1755-1830), a shoemaker and apothecary who lived in Lancaster, PA in 1784. The Denig Illuminated manuscript combines intricate ink and watercolor drawings, personal and devotional texts, and sheet music hymns to form a compelling record of early art and life in the borderlands of 18th-century Pennsylvania.
The two hundred plus year old manuscript is now too brittle and fragile for display or use in the museum galleries and library. An interdisciplinary team of scholars and advisors has been working toward a digital project funded by the Getty Foundation and the Schwarz Foundation, and which will allow Winterthur to develop a digital platform for the publication and interpretation of the manuscript. The scholars and advisors will share their work and perspectives on the Denig manuscript and how it helps them better understand life and art in an early American bordeland: the town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the 18th century.
This program is free. All talks and roundtable discussion will take place in Copeland Lecture Hall in the Visitor Center of Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.
Learn more and register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-denig-manuscript-project-art-making-in-the-early-american-borderlands-tickets-594073910057.
The two hundred plus year old manuscript is now too brittle and fragile for display or use in the museum galleries and library. An interdisciplinary team of scholars and advisors has been working toward a digital project funded by the Getty Foundation and the Schwarz Foundation, and which will allow Winterthur to develop a digital platform for the publication and interpretation of the manuscript. The scholars and advisors will share their work and perspectives on the Denig manuscript and how it helps them better understand life and art in an early American bordeland: the town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the 18th century.
This program is free. All talks and roundtable discussion will take place in Copeland Lecture Hall in the Visitor Center of Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.
Learn more and register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-denig-manuscript-project-art-making-in-the-early-american-borderlands-tickets-594073910057.
Pennoni Panel at the Rosenbach Museum & Library: Is a Book Still a Book if Not a Book?
The printing press is considered one of the greatest innovations in literature – making documents and texts more easily reproduced and accessible. The physical book has been the dominant form for centuries. As digital books and audiobooks take hold, will the physical book be flushed out of existence, a remnant of what used to be? Or will it be able to maintain its place on the shelf? Discussion Moderator Danuta Nitecki is Dean of Libraries at Drexel University. Since assuming the position in 2010, Dr. Nitecki has worked to envision the academic library and to model one that best contributes toward achieving Drexel University’s dynamic mission. Serving on the Provost’s Academic and Deans Councils, the President’s Executive Council, as well as various campus groups, she has worked to evolve the Libraries as an integral part of the learning enterprise. A Drexel alumna, Nitecki is also a Professor at Drexel’s College of Computing and Informatics. Prior to returning to Drexel, she held administrative positions in the libraries of Yale University [1996 – 2010], University of Maryland at College Park [1983-1996], University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [1978-83] and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville [1972-1978]. She has been active in national, state and regional associations, served as a consultant and invited presenter throughout the US and internationally, and has published over ninety articles, books, compilations, and reviews on such topics as user-based evaluation of library services, research methods, library space, document delivery, and management of library services and information technology applications. Panelists Jeannine A. Cook has worked for more than ten years as a writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, influencers, and most recently, herself. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts, Jeannine is also a Leeway Art & Transformation grantee and winner of the Black Girl Magic Award, South Philly Review Difference Maker Award, Philadelphia Magazine’s Best of Philly, Women Leading the 175th, the PACDC Equitable Entrepreneur Award, and the Metro’s Power Women Award. Jeannine’s work has been recognized by several national and international news outlets including the New York Times, Vogue Magazine, the Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, MSNBC, and The Today Show. She is a proud educator and mother with 8 years of teaching creative storytelling in alternative schools and on city blocks. Jeannine writes about the complex intersections of motherhood, activism, and the arts. Her pieces are featured in publications including a column in Philadelphia Stories as well as articles and short stories published by Princeton University Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mothering Magazine, Girl God, Mahogany Baby, Good Mother Project, Printworks, Adelaide Magazine and midnight & indigo. In February 2020, Jeannine completed her first book of short stories, Conversations With Harriett, and opened Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of North Philadelphia & Ida’s Bookshop in Collingswood, New Jersey, with the mission to celebrate women authors, women artists, and women activists. Trevor A. Dawes is Vice Provost for Libraries and Museums and May Morris University Librarian at the University of Delaware, and Vice President / President-Elect of the Association of Research Libraries. He has worked in the academic library sector for over 20 years, developing and providing a range of service-enhancing training and professional development opportunities that positively impact library-wide projects and programs. Dawes also facilitates workshops on leadership development and diversity, improving the knowledge, skills, competencies, and abilities of librarians and library workers. In 2015 Dawes had two book chapters published – both on the topic of leadership. These chapters appear in Creating Leaders: An Examination of Academic and Research Library Leadership Institutes and Crucible Moments: Inspiring Library Leadership. His previous publications include Twenty-first Access Services: On the Frontline of Academic Librarianship (ACRL), 2013. Dawes received his Ed.M. in Educational Leadership from Teachers College at Columbia University and his Master of Library Science from Rutgers University. He earned his Master of Art in Educational Administration from Teachers College at Columbia University and his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Columbia University. Dawes was a 2008 Frye Fellow and participated in the UCLA Senior Fellows program in 2014. Peter Dougherty is a native of Philadelphia who graduated from La Salle College with a B.A. in history. He served as director of Princeton University Press for 13 years, retiring from the Press in 2005. He currently serves as Director of the American Philosophical Society Press in Philadelphia. You can read more about Dougherty’s storied career in academic publishing, which has spanned profound transformations in the publishing industry, in Princeton Alumni Weekly. Alexander L. Ames is Director of Outreach & Engagement at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, where he collaborates with his colleagues on exhibitions, tours, as well as onsite and virtual programs. An intellectual historian and material culture scholar, Ames’s research has explored the production and use of religious books and manuscripts in Pennsylvania and beyond, with a special focus on unlocking how the material construction of books and manuscripts impacted their dissemination, use, and preservation as cultural artifacts. His first book, The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania, was published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2020. His second book, Grolier Club Bookplates, Past & Present, co-edited with Mark Samuels Lasner, will be published by The Grolier Club of New York in 2023. His next monograph, Ships of Reason: The Enlightenment of Stephen Girard, and the Mariners Who Built His Merchant Empire, is an intellectual history of the early modern French Atlantic world, as encountered in surviving libraries and business archives of Enlightenment-era philosophers, merchants, and statesmen. It is under contract with De Gruyter Oldenbourg of Berlin. See photos from the program below. 
Lunchtime Talk with Alexander L. Ames, The Rosenbach’s Associate Curator and author of The Word in the Wilderness
In the 1700s and early 1800s, the German-speaking residents of the agrarian counties surrounding Philadelphia practiced arts of calligraphy and manuscript illumination that have long drawn the attention of scholars, regional historians, and students of American decorative art. Some have interpreted the manuscripts produced by Pennsylvania Germans as “medieval” in nature, whereas others treasure them as ornaments of early American folk life. In this presentation, Dr. Alexander Lawrence Ames takes a different lens to the documents, analyzing them as artifacts of the intense religious culture of the time, and local examples of an overlooked global tradition of manuscript text production during the so-called “Age of Print.” In the process, Ames will reconsider the significance of Pennsylvania in transatlantic religious history and address the importance of the Pennsylvania Germans to the story of America. He will highlight objects from The Rosenbach’s collection that showcase the incredible diversity of religious thought in early Pennsylvania as well as pieces from the Free Library of Philadelphia Rare Book Department’s iconic collection of Pennsylvania German manuscripts. The presentation is based on Dr. Ames’s new book The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania, published by the Pennsylvania State University Press in 2020. Discounted soft-cover copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. About the Speaker Dr. Alexander Lawrence Ames is Associate Curator of The Rosenbach. He holds an M.A. in American material culture from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware, as well as an M.A. in history and a Ph.D. in history of American civilization and museum studies from the University of Delaware. A scholar of early American religion and the history of the book, his research has been published in venues including Winterthur Portfolio, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, Libraries: Culture, History, and Society, as well as Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding. He is also The Rosenbach’s Celtic harpist in residence, having performed numerous bibliographically-inspired recitals in recent years, and will be one half of a harp and organ duet at the upcoming Rosenbacchanal celebration in May. About Lunchtime Talks at The Rosenbach Enjoy In Conversation Programs at midday with leading scholars, artists, and authors talking about their work. Tea sandwiches and light refreshments included. Register here: https://rosenbach.org/events/lunchtime-talk-with-alexander-ames-in-person/ 
Penmanship sample (Vorschrift) for Martin Dettweiler, 1788. 8 1/4" x 13 1/8". Object number 00.265.22. Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center.
The Word in the Wilderness:
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Join Alexander Lawrence Ames for a virtual lecture sponsored by the Indian Valley Public Library in Telford, Pennsylvania. For more details and registration information, visit https://ivpl.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/virtual-author-presentation-alexander-ames/. If you have any questions, please contact DeAnne O'Brien, Adult Services Librarian, at [email protected].
Attend the virtual book launch for The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 19th at 4:30 p.m. The free Zoom event is hosted by the Horner Memorial Library of the German Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Advance registration is required by emailing [email protected]. Download the e-invitation here for more details.
A recording of the book launch event is below.
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Johannes Bard, penmanship sample, "Alphabet Romain," Adams County, Pennsylvania, ca. 1819-1821. Courtesy of the Winterthur Museum.
Pennsylvania State University Press Virtual Author Panel
Join PSU Press and the authors and volume editors of four recent books in Early American Studies for a virtual panel on Friday, June 19th at 1pm EST! Panelists will discuss their new books and answer your questions.
Our guests are:
Alexander Ames, author of The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania
Wendy Bellion, author of Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment
Cecile Fromont, editor of Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition
Bethany Wiggin, editor of Babel of the Atlantic
Moderated by Kathryn Yahner, PSU Press Acquisitions Editor
A recording of the panel is available on PSU Press's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PennStateUniversityPress/videos/612536482725084
Image: Matthew Carey, map of Pennsylvania, published in Philadelphia, 1813. Courtesy, The Rosenbach, Philadelphia.