Works by Rome Torvergata Students: Creating Facsimiles 

Notes about the photo galleries

Here are a few photo galleries with the works created by the students of the Restoration Laboratory of the Single Cycle Course in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Rome Torvergata.

Archive cowhide

One of the artifacts that the students grappled with was the archive cowhide. In the archiving practice the “vacchetta di archivio” refers to a name used in ancient times to indicate booklets or registers, such as those of the offerings for masses mostly oblong in shape, originally covered with cowhide leather, hence the name.

However, it is quite common to come across parchment archive cowhides, as in our case, with decorated corrections, i.e. strips of leather, parchment or fabric fixed to one or more edges of each plate, which allow to keep the book closed for half of a knot.

The making of this binding is quite a long and complicated process, as it requires a lot of precision. It must be kept in mind that it does not require the use of adhesives, which is a major rule for archival bindings, so the stitching, as well as the decorations, must be firmly put in place with a number of other techniques.

Nag Hammadi Codes

This work was the result of a long study by the students of the course during the 2018/19 academic year.

Starting from the study of source materials and literature, some facsimiles of the famous Nag Hammadi Codes have been reproduced. The classic binding still is to this day a matter of careful analysis by scholars, and still retains elements that are not entirely clear.

The effort in trying to reproduce the Nag Hammadi Codes has allowed us to assimilate even better the single passages described in the archiving literature. Here are some images and a final summary of the students’ work.

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