Etherington to give 2009 Brodsky Lecture: ‘A Sixty-year Odyssey in Bookbinding and Conservation’

Don Etherington, president of Etherington Conservation Services, will give the 2009 Brodsky Lecture on Friday, Oct. 16, at 4 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons in Syracuse University’s E.S. Bird Library. “A Sixty-year Odyssey in Bookbinding and Conservation” chronicles Etherington’s career and describes how the bookbinding and conservation fields have evolved during this time and how he learned from and contributed to this evolution.

On Saturday, Oct. 17, Etherington will also instruct a full-day workshop on the restoration and repair of historic cloth bindings using the combination of Japanese paper and linen. If possible, attendees should bring at least two books needing repair. No prerequisite is required for this workshop, and tools will be available. Workshop fee (including all materials) is $100; it is free to students at Syracuse University. Enrollment is limited to 12, with priority given to SU students. The deadline for registration is Oct. 2.

Etherington began bookbinding at age 13 as a student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and at Harrison’s & Co. in London. He studied bookbinding and design with Edgar Mansfield and Ivor Robinson at the London School of Printing and worked as a conservator for the BBC and Roger Powell and Peter Waters.

From 1967–1969, he was a training consultant at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence, where he trained individuals in conservation practices as part of the flood response effort. He came to the Library of Congress in 1970 with Peter Waters, where he served as training officer and assistant restoration officer. He later was assistant director and chief conservation officer at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1987, he joined Information Conservation Inc., where he created a new conservation division.

In 1982, he co-authored, with Matt Roberts, “Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology” (Library of Congress), the first comprehensive attempt to compile terminology from all the bookmaking and conservation fields.

For more information, contact Peter Verheyen, head of preservation and conservation for the SU Library, at pdverhey@syr.edu or (315) 443-9756.