Date and time: 12 April 2013, start 10.00 hr.
Location: Aula of Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands, The Hague.
Conference fee: 25 euro, including coffee, lunch and drinks (10 euro for students and members of the NBV, please mark on your payment).
Registration: please register before 8 April by e-mailing illustratingearlyprintedbook@gmail.com, payments can be made to IBAN: NL92 INGB0005537064; BIC: INGBNL2A, Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging. Please mark your payment with “Illustrating”.
“Hes & De Graaf Publishers, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and the Dutch Book Historical Society (NBV) are organising a conference on 12 April 2013 on the occasion of the publication of the long awaited revised edition of Ina Kok’s widely admired and groundbreaking dissertation on the woodcut illustrations in incunabula printed in the Low Countries between 1475 and 1501.
Ina Kok, curator of City Archives and Athenaeum Library (SAB) Deventer, completed her Ph.D. on this subject in 1994. Even in its unpublished form and only available in a few copies, Kok’s dissertation already acquired the status of a standard reference work. The work will now be re-published in a totally new and updated English edition by Hes & De Graaf Publishers, with illustrations of all the woodcuts used in Dutch incunabula, fully reworked, revised, re-numbered and made much better accessible by the addition of extensive indexes. This edition will be indispensable for incunabulists, book historians in general and historians of medieval and early Renaissance art in particular. The books in this period often appeared without date and by meticulously comparing damages in the woodcuts Kok for example has been able to date more accurately c. 200 editions. Moreover, the work offers a magnificent overview of the imagery in the second half of the fifteenth century.
At the start of the conference, the book Woodcuts in Incunabula printed in the Low Countries will officially be presented, after which an international choice selection of expert speakers will present lectures on the world of the early printed book, their cataloguing and digitisation, and of course the woodcuts they contain. Speakers will be Paul Needham (Scheide Library, Princeton), Lotte Hellinga (British Library, London), Bettina Wagner (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MĂĽnchen), John Goldfinch (British Library, London), Cristina Dondi (University of Oxford), Marieke van Delft (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), Truusje Goedings and Andrea van Leerdam (Utrecht University).
Exhibition
On occasion of the conference an exhibition will be showed in the famous book room of Museum Meermanno | House of the Book. There will be a selection on view of the finest woodcuts and illustrations in books from the collections of the museum and the KB. The exhibition will be officially opened at the end of the conference and can also be viewed. At the museum there will also be the opportunity to enjoy a drink.”
