We highly recommend Mark Levine’s article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine about Timothy Barrett, a specialist in historic sheet paper materials and techniques. Barrett is a research scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Iowa Center for the Book and a Macarthur fellow. He is a dedicated researcher and a consummate craftsman–his papers have been used to repair musical scores of Mozart and as a backdrop on which to display the parchment originals of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
“Sometimes I worry about what a weird thing it is to be preoccupied with paper when there’s so much trouble in the world,” he says, “but then I think of how our whole culture is knitted together by paper, and it makes a kind of sense.”
Read the whole article here, and don’t miss the excellent slide show that goes with it.