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• 2007 Exhibitor List
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• Highlighted Items at the Fair
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Activities at the Fair [return to all activities]

The Art of the Book
Sunday, November 18, 2007 1:00 PM

• James Reid-Cunningham, Chief Conservator of the Boston Athenaeum

Formerly the Conservator of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, James Reid-Cunningham is currently the Chief Conservator of the Boston Athenaeum, a private membership library founded in 1807, and the President of the Guild of Book Workers.

Reid-Cunningham studied history and art history at Johns Hopkins University and Tufts University before beginning his career in book conservation at Harvard. He studied bookbinding at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, where he received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006. He is also a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

He has taught bookbinding and conservation workshops for the Paper and Book Intensive at seven institutions across the country. In addition to his conservation work, he is also the creator of design bindings and book objects that explore traditional bookbinding structures in conjunction with modern materials such as rubber and Formica. He is the proprietor of Hematite Press, a small press that publishes illustrated limited editions of modern texts, with each copy in an original design binding. He has exhibited his books nationally and internationally.

• Ruth Rogers, Special Collections Librarian at Wellesley College

A Special Collections Librarian at Wellesley College, Ruth Rogers administers a collection of over 40,000 items, including rare books, medieval and renaissance manuscripts, modern fine press books, and contemporary artists’ books.

She makes the collection available to students and faculty, giving frequent lectures to visiting classes on the history of the book and artists’ books. With the goal of inter-departmental collaboration, she created “Papyrus to Print to Pixel,” a new course that explores the evolution of written communication technology over 5,000 years. The course received the Apgar Award for Teaching Excellence at the College.

A serious collector and promoter of artists’ books, Rogers organized ABC: the Artists’ Books Conference, held in June 2005 at Wellesley College, and published the related exhibition catalog, Resonance and Response. Most recently, she was the juror and guest curator of the national exhibition Beyond Words: Artists’ Books at the University of the South, in Sewanee, TN.

• Nancy Leavitt, Book Artist

Nancy Leavitt is a calligrapher specializing in hand-lettered manuscript books. Her work is represented in many prestigious private and public collections. As Calligraphy Correspondent for the Guild of Book Workers, she writes about lettering and book arts for the newsletter. She has received several artist grants from the Maine Arts Commission for her research into the history of her craft, and in 2002 she received the Stephen Harvard Award for book design.