The Singer of Amun Nany’s Funerary Papyrus, ca. 1050 B.C.

I had the good fortune to live near Princeton University during much of my adolescence and spent many hours lost in the treasures of the University’s Firestone Library. Over the years, the University began to limit access to students and faculty, but always opened up special exhibitions to the community.  Princeton University Library‘s upcoming exhibition will focus on the diversity and beauty of global book making, concentrating on three major traditions of the book form, codex, East Asian, and pothī.

Forms and Function: The Splendors of Global Book Making opens tomorrow and runs though December 7 in the Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery at the Firestone Library lobby.

It will feature 73 items from Princeton’s collections of Western, Islamic, East Asian, and Mesoamerican manuscripts and printed books, as well as works by modern artists completed in the style of these global traditions.

Highlights include:

• an early Egyptian papyrus scroll displaying parts from the work usually called the Book of the Dead dating from 3rd-1st century BCE
• a stele discovered in 1625 outside Xi’an, China that revealed that Christianity had been in China as early as 635
• examples of texts written on dried and treated leaves from Bali and Myanmar
• examples of works on materials like bark, textiles, shell, lacquer, and copper

“The exhibition will allow visitors to view such a wide variety of book forms from these different traditions,” said the exhibition’s curator Martin Heijdra, Director of PUL’s East Asian Library who received a Ph.D. in Ming History from Princeton in 1995. “They range from the humble to the spectacular, but they all share the purpose of carrying forward knowledge through time.”

A half-day symposium on October 3 at Princeton University organized by Heijdra will feature experts on some of the more unique aspects of book making. It will be held. The symposium is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

The companion digital exhibition will open concurrently on the Digital PUL website.