Book conservator Karin Scheper will receive the Royal Academy’s De la Court Prize this year for her dissertation on the Islamic bookbinding tradition. The prize, € 7500, is awarded for unpaid, independent research.
The De la Court Prize will be presented at the Amsterdam Public Library (OBA) on 13 February 2017, during a symposium dedicated to the study of the book as an object.
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A much-used and much-repaired eighteenth-century prayer book and bag from North Africa.
Fourteenth-century collection of Egyptian or Syrian texts by the scholar Al-Ghazali; binding with characteristic envelope flap and textile doublure.
A manuscript dating from 1562, The book of the knowledge of mechanical devices; the opening shows a special variation on link-stitch sewing.
A miscellany containing texts in Arabic and Turkish, with knotted silk page-markers attached to the fore-edge of certain leaves to facilitate browsing.