Reproduction Bookcases

The Rare Book School (RBS) is an independent non-profit organization based at the University of Virginia that studies the history of manuscripts, rare books, and special collections. It holds 30 classes per year on these subjects, lasting five days apiece. more...

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Courses are offered at its headquarters in Charlottesville, Virginia but others are held in New York City, Washington DC, and Baltimore, Maryland. Its courses are intended for conservators, antiquarian book sellers and collectors, archivists, rare book librarians, and curators.

Originally founded in 1983 at Columbia University by Terry Belanger, the Rare Book School moved to the University of Virginia in 1992. Belanger in 2005 received a $500,000 MacArthur "Genius" Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work with the Rare Book School.

History

Terry Belanger founded the Book Arts Press at Columbia University in 1972 as a laboratory for various programs concerned with the history of books and printing, descriptive bibliography, the antiquarian book trade, and rare book and special collections librarianship. When Belanger became University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections at the University of Virginia in 1992, the BAP and its collections moved with him to Charlottesville, changing its name in 2000 to Rare Book School, and for the most part restricting the Book Arts Press name to publications.

At U.Va., RBS supports courses concerning the history of the book and related subjects. It carries on exhibition and publication programs under the Book Arts Press imprint, and it sponsors public lectures -- notably the annual Sol. M. Malkin Lecture in Bibliography. But its principal activity is an annually-offered collection of non-credit five-day courses on subjects ranging from medieval bookbinding to modern fine printing.

RBS has a collection of printing presses and equipment that includes a full-scale reproduction of a wooden common press (of the sort Benjamin Franklin might have used), a 19th-century Washington iron hand-press (such presses could be broken down and loaded into a Conestoga wagon), and a 20th-century flatbed cylinder proof press (a Vandercook SP-15, favorite of modern private-press letterpress printers). RBS's printing-house comprises 200 cases of printing type (including the 48-case Annenberg collection of wood type), a small Brand etching press, and various pieces of hand bookbinding equipment.

RBS owns about 20,000 books and 10,000 prints, dating from the 15th century to the present. Many of the books -- including a large collection assembled to illustrate the history of cloth bookbindings -- are on display in glass-fronted bookcases in the Dome Room of the Rotunda (the original library of the University), located a short distance from Alderman Library on the Central Grounds of the University. Other collections are kept in the RBS classroom and studio -- rooms which, together with the Pressroom, make up the RBS suite in Alderman Library.

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