Kate Contakos

In 1986 when the Ransom Center acquired the Carl H. Pforzheimer library of early English literature, with books dating from 1475 to 1700, the book world gasped. The Pforzheimer library was the outstanding private collection of early English books available, and the acquisition of this exceptional private library of carefully selected rare, and in some cases, unique books in extraordinary condition, represents one of the Ransom Center’s great achievements in book collecting.

The Ransom Center first acquired Pforzheimer’s copy of the Gutenberg Bible in 1978, one of the most interesting of the 49 known copies of the bible. Rich in both provenance (early annotations place our copy in a fifteenth-century Carthusian monastery) and textual variations (including unique type settings), it is one of the greatest treasures here at the Ransom Center. When the Pforzheimer library arrived eight years later, it continued to impress. It contains the first book printed in English, by William Caxton, titled Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, all four Shakespeare folios, deep holdings in Chaucer, Milton, and Spenser, three copies of the King James Bible from 1611, and the 1535 Coverdale Bible, which is the first bible printed in English, just to name some of the highlights.

The Pforzheimer books are significant bibliographically, intellectually, and culturally, thus the conservation department is proactively looking after their preservation needs. The conservation department has performed previous condition surveys on this collection, but this time we wanted to have a more comprehensive approach. The previous efforts were analyzed, the current curator of the collection was consulted, and the new survey was designed for a wider capture of information that will inform not only conservation needs but curatorial interests such as bibliographical data, bindings, provenance, and metadata. This particular survey will examine all 1,100 books in the collection, in order to address its conservation needs. The survey will be complete by the end of 2015, and the results will be shared publicly.

The Pforzheimer Library is the most frequently used early book collection at the Ransom Center, with many teaching faculty in the humanities using the collection for their classes and several visiting fellows researching within this collection. And with the arrival this year of the new curator, Gerald Cloud, the collection’s use is certain to increase and attract a broader audience.

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‘King Richard II’ by William Shakespeare, London, 1634. Stab-sewn, uncut and in-tact text as it would have been originally issued and sold in St. Paul’s Cathedral courtyard in the early 17th century.

‘Axiochus” by Edmund Spenser, London, 1592. The only complete copy known, it is a modern binding sympathetically styled after a late 16th century binding to protect the text and respect the period.

‘Recuyell of the historyes of Troye’ by Raoul LeFevre, Bruges, 1475(?). Printed and translated by William Caxton, this is the first book printed in the English language.

‘The History of Don-Quichote’ by Miguel de Saavedra Cervantes, London, 1620. Published by Edward Blount (one of the publishers of Shakespeare’s first folio), and translated by Thomas Shelton, this is the first English printing of Don-Quichote.

‘The golden boke of Marcus Aurelius’ by Antonio de Guevara, London, 1546. One image shows the title-page with the facing page made up of printed binders’s waste, complete with hand-written annotations. The close-up image shows both printed and manuscript binders waste.

Preservation Week is an effort to promote preservation and conservation for cultural heritage materials throughout the United States. In 2004, Heritage Preservation performed the first national survey to document the preservation needs of cultural collections held in libraries, archives, and museums. The survey, now known as the Heritage Health Index, reflected a shocking number of cultural materials at risk and in need of some sort of care or treatment.

In response to revealing the alarming amount of collection materials at risk, the American Library Association partnered with the Library of Congress, Institute of Museum and Library Services, American Institute for Conservation, Society of American Archivists, and Heritage Preservation, to highlight the needs of our national treasures and to educate the public on preserving family treasures. These organizations also worked to raise awareness of the important role that preservation and conservation professionals serve within their institutions and the community.
The conservation department at the Harry Ransom Center, founded in 1980, is charged with the care of the Center’s collections. This responsibility poses ongoing and rewarding challenges in the areas of treatment, preventive care, research, and education. With book, paper, and photograph conservation laboratories and a preservation housing lab, the department accomplishes a tremendous amount of preventive care and conservation treatment.

In the past fiscal year, the Ransom Center’s talented staff of conservators, technicians, interns, and volunteers devoted nearly 2,500 hours to conserve more than 3,000 items from the collections. In addition to treatments, the staff worked on surveys, assessments, inspections, teaching, consulting, research, and contributed service to the Center and The University of Texas at Austin in other engaged ways such as answering collection care questions from professionals and the public, welcoming the public to Explore UT Day, giving presentations for local and national audiences, and leading departmental tours.

Learn more about the Ransom Center’s conservation department.

Read related Preservation Week 2015 posts.

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Pforzheimer library receives proactive conservation assessment

Preservation Week celebrates importance of care of collection materials

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Kate Contakos

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