For Immediate Release

January 17th – April 26th

Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound

Scripts, Scribes & Scribbles brings together examples of handwriting and illustrates how handwriting has been taught, reproduced, and reimagined over the past five hundred years. Displaying a range of books and manuscripts from the Collins Memorial Library collection and many private donors and collectors, the exhibition makes the role of handwriting in the age of print, newly legible.

The exhibition includes examples of handwriting from all over the world, including indentured contracts from Britain, palm leaf slat books from Nepal and Burma, examples of modern day calligraphy as well as many manuscripts from the Archives & Special Collections at the University of Puget Sound. Jane Carlin, one of the curators of the exhibit and Library Director at Puget Sound says, “I hope this exhibit will inspire our students to consider working with primary source documents and to explore the stories they tell about our history and legacy.”

Not content with exhibiting only manuscripts and books the exhibit also includes artifacts and tools used in the act of writing, including a central part of the exhibition, a 19th century ladies writing desk (bonheur du jour), inkwells, pens, quills and much more. The majority of these items are part of the vast personal collection of co-curator and Tacoma artist Mark Hoppmann. As he states, “As an artist, I view handwriting as a form of expression unique to that individual, something that a computer keyboard cannot capture.”

The exhibition runs from January 17th to April 26th 2023.

For library hours and parking information, please consult the website: library.pugetsound.edu