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Online Lecture

Textiles, Book & Paper: A Patchwork of Shared Skills - Karen Limper-Herz

The Icon Book and Paper and Textiles Groups continue our series of joint events, with an introduction to embroidered bookbindings

7pm – 9pm BST 17 May 2023 + Add to calendar Free to £10
Embroidered bindings are a curiosity in the history of bookbinding. It was especially during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that embroidery came into fashion in England. While they largely remained a 16th- and 17th-century English phenomenon, textile bindings were also produced in other European countries. A number of embroidered bindings survive today and they are studied both as bookbindings and as pieces of embroidery, but many more were lost to insects and wear and tear over the centuries.


This talk will look at the place embroidered bindings occupy in the history of bookbinding today and will discuss the purposes for which they were made, the materials and techniques employed to create them, common designs used, and the people who worked the embroidery.
Dr Karen Limper-Herz

Dr Karen Limper-Herz

Lead Curator, Incunabula and Sixteenth Century Printed Books, British Library

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