• Date: March 1, 2009 to March 31, 2009
• Place: L. Tom Perry Special Collections

About the Event

2009 is being commemorated worldwide as The International Year of Astronomy. This year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope, and activities to celebrate the history and impact of astronomy and science are taking place on the local, national, and international levels.

L. Tom Perry Special Collections will celebrate the International Year of Astronomy with a month-long display of highlights from our History of Science collection during March 2009. We will be showcasing some of the most important works of astronomy from the Renaissance to the 20th century, including a copy of Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems and manuscript astronomical observations by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre, the father of the metric system. The display can be viewed in the Special Collections lobby during our normal operating hours.

Fore-edge painting of a London street scene

About the Event

Booksellers and book owners through the centuries have often embellished the inside and outside of their books; for example, with fine bindings, decorative bookplates, or marbled endpapers. The fore edge (the outer, unbound edge of the block of pages of a book) has provided artists and artisans the opportunity to decorate books. Through October 31, Special Collections will display several examples of decorated fore edges from the rare book collections in the reference room, 1120 HBLL.

Victorian Bible with gauffered edges

“On the Edge: European Decorated Books” features examples of painted fore edges from the 17th to 19th centuries, including paintings which can only be seen by fanning out the pages of the book. Also on display are examples of gauffered edges, books with gilded edges which have then had a design stamped into them with a heated tool.

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Thursday, November 15, 2007
• Place: Special Collections Classroom

About the Event

During 2006-7, Jeffrey S. Peachey conducted approximately 45 treatments on late 15th and early 16th Century Bibles for Union Theological Seminary, in NYC. This illustrated lecture includes treatments of a Guttenberg Bible, a Koberger Bible, Bomberg’s Biblia Rabinica and some early Luther texts. Many of the books conserved were featured in Jaroslav Pelikan’s 1996 exhibition catalogue “The Reformation of the Bible, The Bible of the Reformation.” It is rare that a conservator has the privilege of working on a large group of books from a specific time period and geographic location, and Peachey will discuss some of the common structural points of failure. One particularly common problem, cracked or cracking wood boards prompted an ongoing experiment comparing 5 common methods of repair, which will also be discussed. Other common problems, and treatments, include reshaping distorted tawed covering material and clasp straps, removal of damaging previous repairs, methods of restoring spine flexibility and correcting displaced hinging paths.

Jeffrey S. Peachey is the owner of a New York City-based studio for the conservation of books the maker of conservation tools and machines. He is a Professional Associate in the American Institute for Conservation and currently Chair of the Conservators In Private Practice. For more than 15 years, he has specialized in the conservation of books and paper artifacts for institutions and individuals. A consultant to major libraries and university collections in the New York City region and nationally, he has been the recipient of numerous grants to support his work. A well-known teacher, Peachey also provides conservation-focused guidance to students in art, archives, and bookbinding programs.

• Time: 3:00 PM
• Date: Thursday, March 24, 2005
• Place: DeLamar Jensen Lecture Room, HBLL 1130

About the Event

As part of the celebration of the grand opening of the new planetarium in the Eyring Science Center at the end of March, Professor David Grandy will give an overview of Galileo’s telescopic observations, the ways he used them to undermine the Aristotelian world system, and his conflict with the Catholic Church. Many today feel that the Catholic Church was clearly in error in censuring Galileo but, as with most historical episodes, the conflict, when examined carefully, does not yield to easy interpretation.

• Time: 3:00 PM
• Date: Thursday, February 24, 2005
• Place: DeLamar Jensen Lecture Room, 1130 HBLL

About the Event

Recent scholarship on astronomical activity in the seventeenth century points to the role of princely patronage in shaping what was studied and to what end. In England, gentlemanly codes of conduct that defined proper presentation and acceptance of observations could also shape scientific activity. The lavish artwork in the engravings of the Prussian astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) points to different social structures and cultural motivations that shaped his work, namely, the structures of local city government and the motivations of civic pride. I will reinterpret Hevelius’s astronomical work by looking closely at his art, his city surroundings and his expressed motivations.

• Time: 7:00 AM
• Date: Jun 1, 2004 to Jan 18, 2005
• Place: L. Tom Perry Special Collections

About the Event

“Looking Inward, Looking Outward” presents, for the first time, a representative sample of the remarkable items contained in the Japanese collection of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections. The physical exhibit, held August 2004-January 2005, was organized around one theme that runs through the collection: Japanese perceptions of themselves and the outside world, and the changes in those perceptions over time. Beginning with the intersections of India-China-Japan in the eighth century, during which time writing and Buddhism exerted a profound influence on Japan, Japanese history has been punctuated by periods of vigorous trade and exchange, followed by isolation. This exhibit was designed spatially to reflect those moments, with the center area of the exhibit representing the intersections between Japan and the outside world, and the two opposing walls representing Japanese views of self and the outside world during the lengthy period of Tokugawa isolation (17th – 19th centuries).

The north wall, “Looking Inward,” and its cases contained items that portray Japanese domestic life, including the flourishing literary and cultural arts, work and play, war and religion, and the penchant Japanese artists and writers had for documenting daily life. The south wall, “Looking Outward,” and its cases were designed to show Japanese representations of the outside, primarily Western, world during a time when trade was limited to a small trickle carefully filtered through Dutch traders in Nagasaki. The Nagasaki “intersection” is represented in the center of the room by a triangle of hanging scrolls and maps. The back wall shows Japan proceeding towards opening to the West, culminating in the establishment of a foreign trading community in Yokohama. In addition, the northeast corner contained a digitized display that allowed visitors to examine a large-format painted scroll of Japanese images of the supernatural.

We invite you to browse this virtual exhibit freely, bearing in mind that our own perspectives of others and of ourselves are constantly in flux, and that only as we expand our knowledge and awareness of the world around us will we be able to follow the Lord’s injunction to understand “things which are at home, things which are abroad, the wars and the perplexities of the nations.” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:79)

Links and Materials

• Exhibit Website
• Virtual Tour of Exhibit

• Time: 7:00 AM
• Date: Dec 1, 2002 to Jan 1, 2003
• Place: L. Tom Perry Special Collections

About the Event

Entitled “The World of Muhammad,” an exhibit in the Lee Library’s L. Tom Perry Special Collections features beautiful examples of Middle Eastern calligraphy and gilt ornamentation. The books on exhibit were selected from an extensive collection of Arabic manuscripts donated to the library by Aziz Atiya.

The release is available at BYU News.