Artisan Field Trip with Stationer Ben Bartgis

As part of the Museum’s Artisan Field Trip series, featuring interviews with living history artisans and makers as they demonstrate their Revolutionary-era crafts, Ben Bartgis joins Museum Gallery Interpretation Manager Tyler Putman to discuss and demonstrate their work and use of historical techniques as a stationer, who specializes in 18th-century writing supplies like paper, pens, and ink.

Bartgis works as a book conservation technician while also teaching penmanship and reproducing book and stationery materials. Read more about Bartgis’s work and research in the material culture of literacy in an April 2020 historian spotlight by Alexander Burns on Kabinettskriege.

Interested in more about 18th-century stationery and books? Check our Artisan Field Trip interview with bookbinder Paul McClintock.