Two free events have been hosted by Flintshire Record Office staff in the same week at The Old Rectory to support the National Explore Your Archive campaign. Stephanie Hines, an Archivist from Flintshire Record Office tells us all about them…
”Having been asked to identify one item from our collections to highlight for the campaign we selected Thomas Pennant’s own copy of his ‘History of the Parishes of Whiteford and Holywell’ (1796) held here at the Record Office (ref D/DM/955). To explain the importance of the volume itself we invited Paul Brighton from the Pennant Society to talk about Thomas Pennant and Mark Allen, our Conservator to talk about the volume’s binding and the history of bookbinding in general. Having braved the elements, people gathered in the searchroom on Wednesday evening and experienced two very informative and enjoyable talks”
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”This talk was linked to our second event which took place on Saturday 23rd November. A Bookbinding Workshop, led by Mark Allen, gave a small number of people the opportunity to learn about the ancient craft of bookbinding and to make their own beautiful hand-bound notebook. We are grateful to CyMAL for providing a grant which allowed the buying of enough materials to give people this opportunity.
Mark demonstrated each stage of the process and provided individual tuition as the day progressed. The day began with the participants choosing which marble paper and leather spine they would like to use for their notebook. They then received instruction on how to fold paper according to the direction of the grain, cut it to shape, measure and cut their boards, sew the book, glue the spine then cover the boards with cloth before adding the marble paper to give it a great look.”
Thank you to Stephanie Hines from Flintshire Record Office for being our guest blogger this week. Find out more about events hapening in archives across Wales by visiting www.archiveswales.org
