Hello everyone! I am sorry that I cannot join you at this year's Standards, but I know that a number of The Legacy Press authors will be there who have recently published an essay or a title or have a forthcoming book. Forthcoming books include: *Ethiopian Bookbinding Tradition* by Bill Hanscom The history of the codex in the Ethiopian highlands stretches back over a millennium to the earliest centuries of the now-ubiquitous book form. The legacy of Ethiopia’s bound manuscript tradition – one of the longest continuously practiced in the world – has been carried forward by countless scribes, passing their skills down through generation after generation. This history is evident not only in the hundreds of thousands of bound manuscripts that survive, many still in active use, but also in those still being produced today. *Ethiopian Bookbinding Tradition* is the first major work to detail and describe this tradition and the practices of the Ethiopian scribal bound book, providing a comprehensive technical study of its materials, structures, and techniques. It gathers and synthesizes the significant but dispersed and often inaccessible body of literature on the subject with further observations and analysis provided by the author. Through in-depth discussion and extensive illustrations, this book meets the long-overdue need to bring Ethiopian bookbinding into the spotlight as a significant tradition in its own right and to firmly establish it within the larger history of bookbinding. Expected February 2026. *A Global Exploration of Birch Bark Books and Manuscripts* by Marieka Kaye and Oa Sjoblom with contributions from Kelly Church, Mary Hamilton French, Crystal Maitland, Blaire Morseau, and Radha Pandey The need to learn more about the history and material technology of birch bark in bookmaking arose when two conservators, Oa Sjoblom and Marieka Kaye, received damaged copies of Simon Pokagon’s (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) birch bark books, The Red Man’s Greeting (1893) and The Red Man’s Rebuke (1893), at the Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard Library, and the conservation lab at the University of Michigan Library, respectively. These small and delicate books, letterpress printed on the bark of the North American paper birch and sold at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, are frequently studied for their importance to Indigenous book history and the strong statements that Pokagon made, advocating for the rights of Indigenous communities. The damage found in the books made them unsafe to handle and repair was required to continue allowing use. Conversations with experts in related disciplines and current Indigenous artists working with birch bark were a vital part of these treatments and led to collaborative projects. For this essay, they interviewed Indigenous birch bark artists Kelly Church and Devon Kicknosway, and learned about how birch bark was harvested and prepared by the Anishinaabe. Sjoblom and Kaye’s original focus for this research was North American birch bark books. These artifacts have been pillaged and pulled from their communities, and now is the time to focus on returning them, with respect for their true homes. According to Morseau, the descendants of the creators of these birch bark narratives are uniquely equipped to understand and preserve them. Speaking with conservators who had worked with these books, including Maitland and French, Sjoblom and Kaye were struck by the similarities and differences and felt their research would benefit from expanding their focus. The global use of the material is the focus of this book, providing pathways to explore the similarities and differences in how birch bark has been used for books and manuscripts across the world in very different times. In our attempt to include contemporary artists in our discussion, we also stretch outside birch to include Radha Pandey’s study of the use of sanchi bark in India for books and manuscripts through her interview with artist Mridu Bora. This type of bark is harvested and prepared in much the same way as birch bark and reveals yet another dimension to the way bark has been used in the history of written culture. Expected October 2025. And of course, Vol. 9 (the final volume) of *Suave Mechanicals*, edited by Julia Miller, was published this summer with essays by: Whitney Baker, Guilherme Canhao, Ashley Cataldo, Kyle Clark, Tom Conroy, Amy Crist, Steffi Dippold, Anna Embree, Anne McLain, the late John Nove, Todd Pattison, Jeff Peachey, Olivia Primanis, Richard Sauders, and Jay Tanner. Be sure to check out TLP's website for more information: www.thelegacypress.com/ My best to you all, Cathy -- The Legacy Press Cathleen A. Baker 1513 Long Meadow Trl Ann Arbor MI 48108-9633 "All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention" —Rudolf Arnheim www.thelegacypress.com | thelegacypress@gmail.com Publishing award-winning books about the Printing, Paper, and Bookbinding Arts.