Collecting Trash: Wastepaper in Early American Bindings

Join us for a talk by BSA member and American Antiquarian Society Curator of Manuscripts Ashley Cataldo! Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Bear, fox, skunk, raccoon, and muskrat bones. Earthenware vessels and ceramics in shards. Tobacco pipes. Clam and mussel shells. These are the typical contents of an 18th–century trash pit from New England. But there are never any books. Instead printed waste was part of the larger ecosystem of 18th century printing, binding, and bookselling. It was incorporated into the bindings of many early American books, just as it is today embedded in the very fabric of life around us. In this talk, Ashley Cataldo will introduce the many uses of printed waste in early American bookbinding, mainly drawn from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society, from the 1640 Bay Psalm Book to 19th-century printed books from Hawaii.