2025 Poster Session

The conservation and digitization assessment of the Huntington’s Mexican incunabula collection revealed that a dozen of its fifty-four early Novo-Hispanic publications feature marcas de fuego—distinctive epigraphic or figurative branding iron marks burned by the owning mendicant orders, institutions, or individuals onto the volume’s textblock edges. This practice is theorized to have originated during the mid-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in present-day Mexico as a method to assert ownership and deter book theft in the Viceroyalty of New Spain –a crime often punishable by excommunication due to the books’ value. Marcas de fuego provide a unique window into the history of book ownership and provenance of viceregal Novo-Hispanic collections as their study contextualizes the fate of libraries following the dissolution and nationalization of conventual and private secular collections in the nineteenth century. To advance the Huntington’s Mexican incunabula scholarship, the conservator established a collaboration with the Catálogo Colectivo de Marcas de Fuego (CCMF), a Mexican initiative dedicated to cataloging and describing firebranded printed Mexican works displaced across the globe, understanding the historical processes affecting Spanish American book histories, and reconstructing fragmented viceregal Novo-Hispanic collections. Research at the Huntington will include the digital imaging of the firebrands using a Nikon D810 camera and image processing in Adobe Lightroom. Following CCMF guidelines, each firebrand will be categorized, and its dimensions will be submitted in millimeters along with high-resolution images of the firebrands, the corresponding volume's title, and its Huntington call number. The images will be compared against the CCMF’s data to determine potential provenance, including institutions, regions, and historical period. Preliminary observations indicate that viceregal Roman Catholic religious orders and academic institutions formerly owned most firebranded Huntington Mexican incunabula. Close examination revealed the later practice of partially removing firebrands during the trimming, edge gilding, and rebinding of volumes into nineteenth and twentieth century book structures. The evidence of provenance erasure suggests that other rebound Mexican incunabula in North American collections might have had their firebrands removed by intentional or common practice rebinding processes that today contribute to the physical loss of historical information. Research in the Huntington’s records, supported by curatorial consultations, confirm that the volumes were acquired between 1911 and 1926 with the existing bookbinding alterations, indicating that they were rebound before Henry Huntington's acquisition from North American collectors. These preliminary observations, combined with institutional research, demonstrate that firebrands provide valuable insights on the migration of Novo-Hispanic early printed works into local and international collections, including the Huntington’s. The research also serves as a model for U.S. cultural heritage institutions to engage with initiatives like the Catálogo Colectivo de Marcas de Fuego (CCMF), emphasizing the value of bilingual scholarship and the need to understand the unique material characteristics of Latin American collections, which often differ from their European counterparts. This project also highlights the importance of international partnerships and underscores the pivotal role conservators play in the detailed examination of global heritage, advocating for in-depth studies and equitable preservation practices for the reconstruction of fragmented cultural histories.