Academic and Career Accomplishments
Since the founding of his business in 1975, Bruce P. Ferrini is one of the foremost dealers in Western Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in the world. A 1967 graduate of Ravenna High School, Bruce gave the first major exhibit of Western Illuminated Manuscripts in Japan in association with the first viewing of the Gutenburg Bible in the Orient. The exhibition was attended by the Emperor of Japan and his son. In 1995, Bruce played the principle role in the discovery and subsequent return to the Vatican Library in Rome of several important manuscript leaves and paintings which had been created for Petrarch. The leaves had been stolen by an Ohio State University Art History Professor who served a prison term for the theft of those items. Recently, Bruce was a partner in the transaction that sent the Stammheim Missal to the Gerry Museum for an eight-figure price, the largest amount ever received for a book or manuscript sold by a private dealer. He has published more than a dozen catalogues, the latest entitled, Important Illuminated Manuscripts, as well as numerous scholarly studies. His Crozier Press, with an advisory board composed of America’s foremost medieval manuscript scholars, is conducting a comprehensive survey of Illuminated Manuscripts in North American collections. Bruce is currently touring the world, exhibiting some of the most beautiful manuscripts ever held by a private collector while promoting his most recent catalogue. Since 1960, Mr. Ferrini has been interested in ancient numismatics and gold and silver treasure objects. His newest business venture called “Tesorso,” offers a comprehensive selection of items from his collection of more than 5,000 objects. Special projects have included the publication of a Leaf Book of the 1462 Bible, and a Leaf Book of a Thirteenth-Century Bible. In 2003, Bruce, a 1971 graduate of Kent State University, made an endowment to the university as a tribute to their son, Matthew, who died last year. The Matthew Ferrini Institute for Human Evolutionary Research will be headed by KSU Anthropologist, Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy, with whom Bruce studied while an undergraduate. Bruce wanted “something of lasting merit” in memory of his son, and is “particularly happy that Matthew and Dr. Lovejoy will be linked through the institute because he considers them both exceptional people.”