Marie Oedel - Bookartisan

Bookbinding, Repair and Custom Enclosures

• About Marie Oedel

     Marie has been binding and repairing books for over 20 years, and is the Book Conservator for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts library  as well as the primary conservator for other collectors, museum departments and archivists. 
A Professional Associate of the AIC (American Institute for Conservation), Marie has been on the Board of the Northeast Document Conservation Center as corporate Treasurer.  She is active in the Guild of Bookworkers, and has been on the Board of Trustees at the North Bennet Street School . She is the past Chair of Publications and a Council Member of The Grolier Club in NYC. In addition, she is also  past president of the Ticknor Society and a Proprietor and shareholder of the Boston Athenaeum.  As a graduate of the North Bennet Street School, Marie has studied in Sweden and interned at the Northeast Document Conservation Center. Marie works on all types of books, from family bibles and dictionaries, to custom collections and new bindings.   Her work is in many libraries, universities and museums, and two original collaborations with Laura Davidson are also in the collection of the Library of Congress.  She has also spent significant time in Southeast Asia and is familiar with books and bookbinding techniques from that area of the world. See info from her trip in 2002

• Current Research:(contact Marie directly for further information)

• 17th Century Embroidered Bindings
• Anna Eliot Ticknor & the Society to Encourage Studies at Home (monograph 2017)

• Education:

• Graduate: North Bennet Street School – Bookbinding  Boston MA USA. www.nbss.org
• Graduate: Harvard Business School – MBA  Cambridge MA USA   www.hbs.edu
• Graduate: Wheelock College – MS Non-profit Leadership  Boston USA  www.wheelock.edu
• Graduate: University of New Hampshire - BA  www.unh.edu

• Clients/Projects include

• Conservation of Dows Dunham's sketchbook. Dunham (1890-1984) was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and Curator of Egyptian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2026)
• Paper conservation of Hemingway's Men at War - galley copy with his notations from 1942 (2025)
• Conservation of original MGM Studio Album More Stars Than There Are In Heaven used in early movie promotion (2025)
• Conservation of and enclosure for Maria Louisa Hawthorne's copy of Hannah More's Moral Sketches signed by Louisa on her 15th birthday (2024)
• Conservation of Photographs of Sinhalese Minor Arts: Including Tamil Pottery and Jewelry Made in Ceylon, Coomaraswamy, A.K. & Coomaraswamy, E. M. (c.1908) 4 volumes, illustrations and plates, manuscript. For MFA Boston (2022-2023)
• Conservation of Japan, Described and Illustrated by the Japanese, Written by Eminent Japanese Authorities and Scholars, Brinkley, Captain F. of Tokyo, Japan (ed.). (1897).  J. B. Millet Company, Boston, Edition de Grande Luxe, in 10 volumes.  Copy 36 of 50 copies. MFA Boston (2021-2022)
• Conservation of Cailliaud's Carte Generale de L'Egypte et de la Nubie (1827) for Ancient Nubia Now at the MFA Boston (2019-2020)
• Conservation of Robert Johnson's Bible for the Cambridge Public Library (2019) Robert Johnson was a freed slave and the bible descended through the family, who donated it to the library.
• Conservation of Daniell's Oriental Scenery in 6 volumes London 1795-1808 for Museum of Fine Arts (2018)
• Disbinding and conservation of Gov. John D. Long's correspondence 1850-1870 (~ 4000 letters) for Hingham Public Library (2017) and scanned into Digital Commonwealth
• Conservation of John Green's A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (1746) and Athanasius Kircher's La Chine (1667) for the PEM exhibition Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age (2016)
• Conserved MFA/Harvard 32 foot long expedition map of the Nile river with extensive marginalia.  Scanned and produced two facsimiles for the MFA.
• Conservation of 13 volumes of the 1887 edition of Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion studies for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
• Conservation of Shakespeare's second folio (1632)
• Conservation of De L'Egypt (L'Armee Francoise L'Expedition 1823)
• Conservation of Aududon's elephant folio of The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845)
• Conservation of Gerarde's Herball -1636
• Collaboration with MIT Wunsch Conservation Laboratory on the conservation of the "Liber sacerdotalis" 1523
• Conservation and digitization of Caroine Phillips 1888 diary and sketchbook.
• Conservation and protective enclosure for The National Trust for Scotland Foundation
• Peabody Essex Museum - Conservation of 3 books for "Unbound - highlights from the collection" exhibit 2012
• Peabody Essex Museum - restoration and archival enclosures of Asian books received as gifts  www.pem.org
• Boston Architectural College - conservation of American Architecture portfolios
• Private client - repair of autographed book of family significance
• University of Uppsala Sweden - study of early bindings (10th -19th centuries) at the Carolina Rediviva Library Link to the library in English 
• New Hampshire Furniture Masters archive conservation
• Restoration and conservation of the John F. Andrews Mansion library in Boston
• Private client - restoration and enclosure of 1750 edition of Complete Works of Shakespeare 
• Appalachian Mountain Club - restoration and archival enclosures of books from their collection www.outdoors.org
• American School for the Deaf – Hartford CT - Repair of books for their library
• First Church of Salem – Salem MA - Archival enclosures for some of the earliest church records in the US