I’m honored to have one of my textile pieces included in an exhibit currently running at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Special Collections. The exhibit is entitled “Reactions: Medieval/Modern,” and focuses on the varied relationships between manuscripts and their readers, redactors, and reworkers throughout time; including the relationship between artists and writers, and the inspiration they take from medieval manuscripts in the modern era. And what single work have so many of them drawn inspiration from? The infamous Voynich manuscript, of course; Beinecke MS 408.

My colleague Meredith Miller and I created this coloring book—A Beinecke Collection of Creatures—in honor of the reopening of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. It’s an alphabet coloring book, and each letter is dedicated to an animal found somewhere within the Beinecke’s vast collections. The images selected cross geography, language, and time. From “A is for Antelope,” from a 1599 German volume entitled India Orientalis; to “Z is for Zebu,” from Master Woodbine’s Alphabet for All Good Children, London, 1850.