Marco di Bella and Nikolas Sarris: Field Conservation Experiences from East Tigray, Ethiopia

The Ethiopic bookbinding tradition of manuscripts is an entity in its own right, known to researchers mainly from the examples found in European libraries, which cannot be representative of any coherent period or production. Consequently our knowledge of this tradition, the techniques and the materials used is limited.

On the other hand Ethiopia still concentrates tens of thousands of early and unknown manuscripts found in nearly 600 monasteries and 20000 churches. Ethio-SPARE is a European-funded project that through field trips to unexplored areas of the country identifies, digitizes, catalogues and aims to preserve such a wealth.

During its fourth field research and digitizing mission in November-December 2011 in East Tigray, the Ethio-SPARE project invited a small team of conservators for two weeks to carry out a conservation assessment and as a result to provide first aid conservation treatments and preservation advice and measures for some the most precious and representative manuscripts identified during the last two years of the project.

Local resources, conservation equipment and materials or a workshop were entirely unavailable. Whatever was required to carry out the necessary treatments had to be carried from overseas for the occasion. Moreover, the selection of materials was based only on photographic evidence prior to the field trip.

Once on site, a direct examination was necessary to evaluate the real conservation needs and therefore a conservation survey of several selected manuscripts was carried out with the survey database developed by the Ligatus Research Centre. At the same time a very basic and suitable workspace had to be prepared to accommodate the manuscripts selected to be treated.

The conservation assessment and the conservation treatments that were carried out on four mid-14th to mid-16th century manuscripts provided the opportunity to come across unknown features of Ethiopic bookbinding, encouraging further research towards a better understanding of this unique bookbinding tradition that has survived unchanged since the early days of Christianity and performed until today.