Long fascinated by early civilizations, Robert Ullerich signed up for a class in ancient art and culture at Washington State University expecting to gain new insights to human history but not ancient skills – surely nothing he could apply in his 21st-century life.
This spring, Ullerich and his classmates in Hallie G. Meredith’s “Arts of Ancient Greece and Rome” course were conducting research and preparing workshops to teach Pullman and Spokane community members about ancient technology and how to create books the way early people did, including binding pages and making their own ink, styluses and paint brushes.
Meredith, a clinical assistant professor of fine arts, designed the workshops to coincide with an exhibition of artifacts from the lost Roman city of Pompeii at Spokane’s Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC), where some 500 people were expected to participate.