WASHINGTON – Over the past two years, economic hard times have loomed as large at Washington National Cathedral as the Gothic spires that grace the city’s skyline. The Rev. John Runkle, conservator of Washington National Cathedral, leafs through a rare Dutch Bible. Runkle is being let go at the end of June, a casualty of the cathedral’s third round of staff cuts to help balance the budget.
This book of psalms dating to 1635 and a King James Bible printed in 1611 are in the Washington National Cathedral’s collection. The cathedral has slashed its budget from $27 million to $13 million, outsourcing its gift shop operation and shuttering its popular greenhouse and its continuing education college for clergy.
Three rounds of layoffs have reduced the staff from 170 to 70, including, at the end of June, the cathedral’s conservator and the liturgist who oversaw the April memorial service for civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height. Then news came last week that the cathedral, visited by every U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt laid its foundation stone in 1907, was considering selling off part of its rare books collection, probably worth millions.
Cathedral officials said the potential sale of the books is a separate matter from its ongoing budget difficulties. But they acknowledge that they no longer have the staff and resources to care for such a vast collection, which includes volumes donated by Queen Elizabeth II and Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie and a Dutch Bible that was the first written in modern language.
The officials are in discussions with the Folger Shakespeare Library, which, with its internationally known conservation department, could possibly better preserve the fragile pages and make the tomes available to scholars.
The cathedral’s chief operating officer, Kathleen Cox, said the possible book sale, as well as measures such as eliminating financial support of a global poverty program, is an attempt to refocus on the cathedral’s core mission as a “church for the nation” and tourist attraction.
Nearly 400,000 visitors a year take in the massive building’s stained glass, carved gargoyles and a central tower that soars 30 stories, its top the highest point in the District of Columbia. President Woodrow Wilson is interred there, and the cathedral has hosted the funerals of three other presidents: Ronald Reagan, Gerald R. Ford and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“We are and should be a church for the nation, a symbol of the role of faith in our country,” Cox said. She said she expects the cathedral, which doesn’t receive any federal or Episcopal Church funding, to end the fiscal year June 30 with a balanced budget, thanks to the deep cuts, $11 million in fundraising that is running ahead of projections and a 5 percent draw into the cathedral’s $50 million endowment fund.
This year has been really solid,” Cox said. “With the right staff and prudent changes, we have done well.” Even so, the cathedral’s dean, the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd, sent out an anxious fundraising appeal this month, asking for $500,000 by June 30 to forestall further cuts and repair winter storm damage. Despite the letter, cathedral officials said they think no further cuts will be necessary.
Cox said the cathedral needs to do a “better job of telling our story,” especially to the younger members of its growing congregation of 800, who could be potential future supporters. The average age of cathedral donors is 71, according to one estimate. The cathedral’s struggles mirror those going on in many congregations, said the Rev. Stuart Kenworthy, rector of Christ Church, Georgetown. “What they’re experiencing at the cathedral is what is happening in most Episcopal churches across this country,” he said. “The economic downturn ripples from the very top to the smallest parishes.”
But supporters said they worry that the cuts might affect the cathedral’s ability to carry off high-profile events smoothly, as well as maintain its expansive grounds and lofty building of carved Indiana limestone and jewel-toned stained glass.
”It’s surprising the extent of it. Two or three waves of cutbacks? That’s concerning,” said a retired Pennsylvania bishop, Allen Bartlett, who served as assisting bishop at the cathedral from 2001 to 2004.
The cathedral, which has not had a rare books librarian since the 1970s, has been talking with the Folger over the past year about a possible sale or donation of about 2,000 of its 8,000 books, mostly rare Bibles, Books of Common Prayer and theological works. Nothing has been finalized, Cox said. The cathedral also owns valuable artwork, such as a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, which is in storage.
The gem of its book collection is the Prince Henry Bible, one of the original King James Bibles printed in 1611, which the king gave to his son, the prince of Wales. A similar book was sold at Sotheby’s in 1999 for $340,000. Cathedral officials said they hope the Prince Henry Bible will remain. Letting it go would too much.
“It would be like trying to sell your wedding ring or your grandmother’s china,” said the Rev. John Runkle, the cathedral’s conservator, whose job is being eliminated at the end of the month. With no money for large-scale preservation projects on the horizon, there was little left for him to do.
At least one example of the printed word is in great demand even in the digital age: ancient Bibles.
With a goal of establishing a national Bible museum of great depth and size, the evangelical Christian family behind the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores has been spending heavily to amass a collection that has set dealers buzzing in the staid world of rare books.
Specialists estimate the family has bought illuminated, or decorated, manuscripts, Torahs, papyri and other works worth $20 million to $40 million from auction houses, dealers, private collectors and institutions, some of which may be selling because of financial pressure.
The man leading the effort is Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby, a private company based here that is a favorite of scrapbook makers, do-it-yourselfers and home decorators. The company, founded by his father, David, in 1972, now numbers 439 stores and has generated a family fortune that Forbes magazine estimates at $2.5 billion.
With money to spare, the younger Mr. Green, 46, has found a passion to complement his vocation, and is working with specialists in deal-making and history who, using company money on behalf of the family, began buying with a flourish about six months ago.
“They have caught everyone’s attention because no one in recent memory has spent so much so quickly on Bibles,” said Dr. Eric White, curator of special collections at the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
The collection now includes more than 30,000 items, according to Mr. Green and his team. Some of those were shown to The New York Times at Hobby Lobby offices in Oklahoma City, including a New Testament papyrus from the second century A.D., a lavishly illustrated and illuminated Martin Luther New Testament and a Spanish Inquisition Torah.
“The goal is to create a museum around the story of the Bible,” Mr. Green explained. “No book has been persecuted as much or loved as much. Its incredible story needs to be told.”
Mr. Green is Pentecostal, but other family members worship in churches of other denominations, including Baptist and Assemblies of God. The family gives to a variety of Christian causes, Oral Roberts University and evangelical ministries among them, and adheres to Christian principles, closing its stores on Sundays, playing Christian music in them and operating Mardel, a separate chain of religious bookstores.
With sales last year of just over $2 billion the company has no long-term debt, Mr. Green said over a lunch of sandwiches that began with a prayer at the company’s nondescript, sprawling corporate headquarters. Despite the recession, profits rose in 2009, he said, perhaps because people spent more time at home.
For the Green family, the time seems ideal for buying religious works.
As Sam Fogg, a London dealer of rare manuscripts, put it, “Between 1988 and 1993, the Bible market rocketed,” and then it languished even as the broader art market rose.
In addition, “Libraries are rethinking their mission in the age of digitization,” said David N. Redden, executive vice president at Sotheby’s books department. “They are wondering what their holdings should be: whether they are about collecting rare books or disseminating information. If the latter, do they need rare books? In some ways, it is not a bad time to be buying.”
The Green collection aims to be one of a kind. Other Bible collections in the United States, including one at the American Bible Society in Manhattan, generally intend to inspire readership, said Dr. Scott Carroll, who began advising Mr. Green about six months ago. “Our goal is to inspire people with the story of the Bible and its history.”
Dr. Carroll, a former professor in ancient studies who has specialized in Biblical manuscripts, recently resigned from Cornerstone University, a nondenominational Christ-based liberal arts school in Grand Rapids, Mich., to become executive director of the museum and an adviser to Mr. Green. In the 1990s, Dr. Carroll helped another collector, Robert Van Kampen, build the private Van Kampen Collection of Bibles and related material in Orlando, Fla., and helped oversee its academic objectives, including archaeological digs.
Some who are knowledgeable about the rare book market suggest that the group’s buying has pushed up prices. The buying has also spawned some skepticism about the overall quality of purchases made in such rapid-fire style. Among the 30 objects that the Green group offered for examination recently were a silver amulet from the first or second century inscribed with a passage from Deuteronomy, also known as the Shema; the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, a manuscript originated from the Monastery of Mt. St. Catherine that was home to the earliest near-complete copy of the Bible, and the first volume of a Complutensian Polyglot Bible that was used for the comparative study of the text of Scripture. It contains the first printing of the Septuagint, or Old Testament Scriptures in Greek.
“Compared to objects in the fine art market, they are not hugely expensive, but in the rare book field, they are big time, and these people appear to be spending a lot of money,” said Stephen Massey, an appraiser experienced in ancient religious objects. Though Mr. Massey had not seen the collection, he reviewed a list of the objects that were displayed.
Westminster College at Cambridge put the Codex Climaci Rescriptus up for auction at Sotheby’s last year. “It is not widely used at the school, and the money will help open up the resources of the school to a broader constituency,” said Susan Durber, the principal of Westminster.
The estimated auction price was $1 million. When the manuscript did not sell, the Green group bought it directly from Sotheby’s, for an unspecified price.
The group also bought a Martin Luther New Testament with 44 lushly hand-painted and illuminated woodcuts, suggesting that the edition was made for royal use, perhaps for Luther’s protector, Frederick the Wise.
The book was sold by Jorn Gunther, a dealer who had listed the edition at $400,000 in his catalog. “Book dealers are bibliophiles, but these men are coming at it with a strong belief that the Bible is the word of God and they want to show that,” said Mr. Gunther of Stalden, Switzerland. “It is like a doctor buying medical books.”
Collecting work from the Old Testament and the New Testament has taken the buyers into Judaica. “We have over 1,000 Torahs,” said John Shipman, a venture capitalist who is the third member of the Green buying team. Mr. Shipman, whose father was an ordained minister as are his brother and brother-in-law, said he met Mr. Green, through Mart Green, his brother, about seven years ago, when Mart, the founder and chief executive of EthnoGraphic Media, was producing “End of the Spear,” a film about missionaries killed in Ecuador.
“John talked about collecting Bibles,” Steven Green said. “My brother had talked about a Bible museum. That was how it started.” Mr. Shipman brought in Dr. Carroll at the end of last year. “He has the academic knowledge, and I negotiate the purchases,” Mr. Shipman said. He added that several other families were also collecting with the goal of giving to the museum.
Because the Bible museum has not completed the paperwork to become a not-for-profit organization, the salaries of Mr. Shipman and Dr. Carroll are not yet public, and Mr. Green declined to reveal them. The plans for the museum are quite ambitious. Dr. Carroll said the three were looking for 300,000 square feet of space and hoped to attract more than a million visitors a year.
Dallas is the first choice to house the collection, Mr. Green said, because of the large number of people of faith in the area. He also said that the many seminaries and universities in Dallas would welcome such a museum and it would benefit from their resources.
An offer on a former Macy’s store in a mall was rejected, but Mr. Green is continuing to look for a large property while temporarily storing his trove of treasures at the company’s warehouses.
Thousands of rare books and manuscripts at Camrbidge University Library – including handwritten notes by Sir Isaac Newton – are to be made available on line thanks to a £1.5m donation.
The gift from the former businessman Dr Leonard Polonsky will be used to start the Digital Library for the 21st Century create an infrastructure capable of digitising the vast collection housed at the 600-year-old institution. Digitisation will be completed in stages, with the first collections to be called “The Foundations of Faith” and “The Foundations of Science”.
Among the Library’s religious collections are some of the world’s most ancient Qur’ans and an eighth century copy of the Surat al-Anfal, the Qur’an’s eighth chapter. Judaism is represented by the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection containing 193,000 fragments of manuscripts as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Christian documents include a Greek New Testament manuscript, the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, and a 1455 copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the earliest European book produced using movable type. There will also be the Anglo-Saxon texts the Book of Cerne and the Book of Deer.
The development of modern science is captured in Newton’s annotated Principia Mathematica, copies of his lectures as Lucasian Professor and proofs of Opticks. It is hope that further funding could lead to the digitisation of manuscripts from Darwin and Stephen Hawking, continuing the story of science into the modern age.
Anne Jarvis, the university Librarian, said that the exciting new plans would open up priceless collections to students worldwide. She said: “Our library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia. “We want to make it accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge. “This will not only make our collections available to the world; it will also initiate a global conversation about them.
“At the click of a mouse, students or scholars of divinity or politics, history, physics, medieval languages or the history of medicine, will be able to plunge into the worlds of Mediterranean Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities of the 11th Century, or into the minds of Isaac Newton and his contemporaries. “Faith and science will be the two cornerstones of the project, both of fundamental importance in our quest to understand the world and our place in it.
“Thanks to Dr Polonsky, we are at the start of what we believe will be an incredible journey into the digital future. “Hopefully his generosity will encourage others to follow his lead so we can make one of the world’s great libraries available, literally, to anyone around the world.”
Dr Polonsky, founder of the Polonsky-Coexist Lectureship in Jewish Studies at the University, hoped the project would open a dialogue between libraries worldwide. He said: “As reading and research become increasingly electronic, my hope is that this grant will serve as a catalyst for the digitisation and linking of the great libraries of the world so that their riches can be enjoyed by a global public.”
Cambridge University Library has been a legal deposit library since 1710 and is entitled to acquire a copy of each book and journal published in the UK and Ireland. The library currently houses eight million books and periodicals, one million maps and thousands of manuscripts over 100 miles of shelving, expanding at the rate of two miles per year.
A Collection of rare books, described by experts as the most important of its kind in Ireland outside Dublin is being taken into State care by the Office of Public Works.
The Bolton Library in Cashel, Co Tipperary, was established by an 18th century Church of Ireland archbishop (Theophilus Bolton) and contains a unique collection of 11,000 antiquarian European books, maps and pamphlets including works by Dante and Machiavelli.
The collection, currently housed in the Chapter House of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist St Patrick’s Church, has traditionally been cared for by the local clergy. Despite its proximity to the Rock of Cashel the library is little-known and attracts few visitors.
Martin Mansergh, Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works and the Arts, said a new visitor facility would be established at the library which will “form part of the Rock of Cashel complex” which he described as “Ireland’s mediaeval acropolis”. He hoped the extra visitor centre would “add significantly to the capacity of Cashel to absorb increased numbers of visitors, and act as a signpost to the other attractions within the town”.
The site will be managed jointly by the Library of the University of Limerick and the OPW. The building will be acquired by the State on a long-term lease from the Church Representative Body of the Church of Ireland while the book collection will remain on site but “ownership will in due course be lodged with Marsh’s Library”.
The Minister said “a board of visitors/advisory body” is to be set up “comprising representatives from the OPW, the Church of Ireland, the University of Limerick and other interested bodies to draw on their expertise in the management of the library”.
Dr Mansergh, who is also a Fianna Fáil TD for Tipperary South, said he was “delighted at the positive outcome to long drawn-out efforts to secure the future of the Bolton Library”. He acknowledged “the care and custodianship taken of the library” by successive Deans and Bishops and also the [financial] “support given by the late Tony Ryan”, the Tipperary-born co-founder of Ryanair, who died in 2007. Dr Philip Knowles, Dean of Cashel, who has acted as voluntary curator of the Bolton Library for the past 15 years welcomed the announcement as “very good news”.
An early copy of Paradise Lost could be paradise found for a John Milton enthusiast as the annual Calgary book sale has unearthed a rare copy of this epic poem. The early edition, from the 1700s, is expected to fetch several hundred dollars when it goes up for sale in a couple of weeks.
By the end of his life, Samuel Langhorne Clemens had achieved fame as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, a globe-trotting lecturer and, of course, the literary genius who wrote “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and other works under the name Mark Twain.
Entering new territory. Amazing. Speechless. Puzzled. The following from the Blog of the Library of Congress, i.e., it must be true ?! As this posting is being twitterized too, Library of Congress, here we come:
How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive
Screenprinting is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas.
It is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as silk screening or serigraphy.
Letterpress printing is form of relief printing of text and image using a press with a “type-high bed” printing press and movable type, in which a reversed, raised surface is inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image. It was the normal form of printing text in the west from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century until the 19th century and remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second half of the 20th century.
