Today’s highlight from our Rare Books Collection is some charming marginalia from our copy Der Statt Wormbs Reformation . From what we can tell, the annotator was trying to figure out the time that had passed between the first printing of this text and the year 1614. However, this owner slightly bungled both the original publication date (1499, not 1498) and the math (the difference should have been 116)!
Despite those few mishaps, though, this piece of marginalia is still a favorite of mine. Although the annotation is small, this subtraction makes a nice addition to the work of anyone studying reader-text interactions!
Some books in old bindings may not be entirely what they seem… in addition to housing the text of the main book, they may also harbor fragments of much older manuscripts! Known as “manuscript waste,” these fragments range from single teeny tiny strips to reinforce the binding’s inner structure to entire pages that could be recycled into covers. The strength and durability of vellum means that sometimes when such waste is found, its work of origin can be determined.
From around the 15th to the 17th century, attitudes towards religious practice fluctuated throughout Europe. A particularly violent shift occurred in England under the reign of Henry VIII, in which monasteries (and their books) were all but destroyed. This, as well as numerous less noticeable changes of religious opinion, meant that many religious manuscripts (particularly liturgical works like songbooks) were suddenly outdated; And due to the fact that the majority of medieval manuscripts were written on vellum, an expensive and sturdy material, people were loath to simply throw them away. Instead, they recycled the vellum in creative ways, reinforcing not only book bindings but clothesas well!
(The practice of reinforcing bindings with waste didn’t stop in the 17th century- examples of books using printed paper waste can be found in bindings done all the way up to the 20th century!)
(Books from Senate House Library, the University of Glasgow Library, and my personal collection)
Manuscript waste is such an interestiing topic in book history.
‘The British Military Library or Journal: comprehending a complete body of military knowledge; and consisting of original communications; with selections from the most approved and respectable foreign military publications’. 1798 – 1801.
This two volume set consists of the issues of The British Military Library produced from 1798 – 1801 and subsequently bound together.
The British Military Library is a fantastic resource bringing together studies on particular military figures, case studies of battles complete with compositions on pull out sheets and articles on various topics relevant to a British army officer of the time.
i – The title page.
ii – Left an officer of the 7th (or Queen’s Own) Regiment of Light Dragoons. Right an officer of the 16th (or Queen’s Own) Regiment of Light Dragoons.
iii – Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Abercromby K.B. Here dressed as Colonel of the 2nd (or Royal North British) Dragoons.
iv – A list of the rates of pay for the various ranks of cavalry in the British Army.
As seen at the Lyon & Turnbull rare books and manuscripts auction viewing back in early May, 2016.
Today’s item has some beautiful examples of marbled paper, showing how many different designs are possible, including examples of waves, flowers, even calligraphy! It also includes a short history of marbling, particularly in the Middle East and Germany.
Binding: Bound in full green morocco with envelope flap, gilt floral decoration on both covers, marbled end papers.
Includes 10 tipped in specimens of marbled paper. The 10 designs are Suminagashi, stone, fantasy, heart, hatip, blossom, calligraphy, art nouveau, and waves.
“Printed at Druckerei Muller + Bass, Tübingen. Hand bound by Maren Mau-Pieper, Tübingen. Marbled specimens by Nedim Sönmez.” –Colophon. Library has deluxe copy no. 31, signed by author. –Catalog
We are excited to continue our online After Hours open houses this semester! Join the Special Collections Research Center on the second Tuesday of each month 4-5 pm for a virtual encounter with our collections. While all the events are online, we have offered an in-person option for the first session in the series. All are welcome to beam in and join us.
Our first event will take place next Tuesday 11 January from 4-5.30 pm EST and will feature a selection of Spanish Treasures at the University of Michigan Library. The Special Collections Research Center holds an extraordinary collection of early printed books published in Spain from the fifteenth century onward. Particularly significant are the holdings illustrating the Golden Age of Spanish literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that is, the so-called “Siglo de Oro,“ which includes world-renowned writers like Garcilaso de la Vega, Miguel de Cervantes, and Francisco de Quevedo. Curator Pablo Alvarez will provide a tour of artifacts as witnesses of how literary masterpieces such as El Lazarillo de Tormes or Don Quixote were published and read centuries ago, as well as additional documents illustrating some of the political and religious anxieties of Spanish society at that time, including books produced by the formidable Holy Inquisition.
Marbled Monday board linings and hinges! From the lower board on the cover of Isl. Ms. 453, a manuscript volume of Maʻālim al-tanzīl, al-Baghawī’s (d.1117?) commentary on the Qurʼān, copied in 1447 in Samsun
Biblia Pauperum-(very) Early modern printing press(7/?)
This Biblia Pauperum (Bible of the poor) is a beautiful example of a block book, or a xylographica. These are short books printed mainly in the second half of the 15th century in Europe. These are woodcuts with blocks carved to include both text and illustrations. Because these woodcuts are so labour intensive and difficult to produce (imagine carving this out of a piece of wood!), these block books are often quite short. Most block books date from around the same time as the typeset book (Gutenberg’s invention) and were a cheaper alternative. Single leaf woodcuts were already a few decades more popular.
ABiblia pauperum was a tradition of Bible pictures, it illustrated the typological correspondences between the Old and New Testaments. These Biblia pauperum put more importance on the images than on the text. This one dates back from 1460-1470.
Très riches heures du Duc de Berry-manuscripts(18/?)
This manuscript dates back from 1412-1416. The imagine is the “Labours of the month June” and shows women reaping the harvest, beside the Hotel de Nesle (Parisian residence of the Duke). (x)
I just love medieval images of women, living their day to day life. It makes me feel connected to previous generations of women. “From the first human handprint on a cave wall, we’re part of something continuous.” (The Dig)
This tiny book, measuring only 5mm by 5mm, is a prayer book called “The Lord’s Prayer” and contains the prayer in seven languages. The print is so fine that it cannot be read with the naked eye. It was made in 1952, as one of a few hunderd copies, by the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, to finance restoration works. Together with the small book, it was sold with its metal printing plates, which are bigger than the prayer book itself. This weekend, it was sold in Brussels for 3,500 euros (x,x)
“The first occurrence of plague in the recorded history of the Middle East was known as the “Plague of Justinian”, named after the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I. It made its way to the Land of Israel from Egypt around 541-542 AD. The results were documented in detail by the emperor’s court historian.
A thousand years later, the residents of the land were still dealing with fairly frequent outbreaks. Throughout the 16th century, plague spread across different parts of the Middle East. The common wisdom in Jerusalem of the period spoke of a new wave of pestilence hitting the city every six or seven years. In the writings of the sages of the holy city of Safed (Zfat), in the northern Land of Israel, we find evidence that these rabbis sought to fight off the plague with the help of special amulets, among other things.
We found the amulet below in a copy of the book Shaar HaYichudim (“The Gate of Unifications”) by the famous Safed Kabbalist Hayyim ben Joseph Vital. The Hebrew title appearing at the top reads “This amulet is for plague from the holy ARI…” (The holy ARI was Rabbi Isaac Luria, Vital’s teacher). The charm in fact consists of two different amulets joined together, one on top and one below. The image here is taken from a later printing of the book which includes various commentaries on the writings of Vital and Luria, but the amulet, or similar versions of it, appear in earlier printings as well. This edition was published in 1855 in the city of Lemberg, today’s Lviv, in western Ukraine. Isaac Luria perished during an outbreak of plague in the year 1572, when he was only 38 years old.”
This post was written by Natasha Skorupski, a Department of Classics Intern in Archives & Special Collections for the Spring of 2022.
Archives & Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh holds many rare books and printed materials. During my internship with the Hillman library and the Classics Department, I came across an interesting book: Harmonia Macrocosmica or Atlas Universalis Et Novus created by Andreas Cellarius and published in 1708. However, it was not the words or even the illustrations that interested me; instead I was taken by how the book was printed. The images and texts seemed to be printed on one page and then that page was bound to another.
(Above) If you look very closely you can see a faded line parallel to the final bordering black line. The faded line marks where the page, containing the colored print and illustrations, is adhered to the blank page that is part of the bound book.
For hours I searched trying to figure out the name and more about this process. Eventually I came upon a small bit of information. Tip in (or tipping-in) printing is when a printed sheet is inserted into a book or manuscript by gluing (or stapling) it to an existing page. However, the printed page is not part of the book’s binding (Glossary of Book Terms). This was exactly what I was looking for, except after discovering this, I could find absolutely nothing directly about its history. From searching many different sources and putting pieces together, I came across this conclusion—the original printed pages were mass produced and then (at least for this manuscript) the illustrations were hand painted in, and the paint looks quite similar to a watercolor based paint.
Having the pages as individual sheets allows for multiple people to be working on the pages at once, and also allows the artist to immediately move to the next page without having to wait around for the paint to dry. Whenever the paint on the page has dried, it can be bound or glued to a bound book. This is a slower process as only one page can be done at a time, and the glue/paste binding the pages together must fully dry before one is able to move onto the next page. While it was hard finding out about the background of these types of books, there were numerous resources on how to paste bookplates and individual pages into a book.
The process of binding pages together is extremely simple and is precisely what you think it would be. There are tiny variations in the process, but I will explain to you the one I found on the website of wood engraver and illustrator Andy English. The materials he used were a bookplate, scrap paper, pencil, small brush (good enough to avoid bristles detaching themselves), glue, a soft cleaning cloth, and a container to mix in (English).
He recommended PVA (Polyvinyl acetate) glue as it is easily thinned with water, flexible, and acid free. This is important as his mixture is about 60% glue and 40% water, with is mixed in the container. However, he notes that he uses a little less water for paperbacks. Before you start, make sure to wash your hands and keep them clean at all stages. Take the bookplate/page you wish to attach and place it on the book/page where you want it. If you wish, you may mark in faint pencil marks the corners of where the attached page will go. Once the mixture is made, place the bookplate/page face down on a clean piece of scrap paper (photocopy paper is perfect). Take some paste on the brush and (holding the plate firmly with a finger) brush the paste on the bookplate/page from the center going outwards (English).
It is important not to overload the plate with paste! Once the paste is on, take the bookplate/page and hold it above where you want to place it in the book. Then carefully, but deliberately, place it onto the book and smooth it down. If there is a little too much glue, use a clean cloth (lightly dampen with clean water) to wipe it carefully and use light pressure to avoid damaging the surface of the paper (English).
(Above) Image from “Pasting Bookplates into Your Books” by Andy English, 2021.
Lastly, leave the book open until it has thoroughly dried.
Librarians vs. archivists: the eternal struggle! Wait, no. We’re friends! You can learn about the difference from @book-historia in this week’s Magic book history thread, featuring a pair of helpful cogwork uhhh… information professionals.
Yucky, damaged, very very used books are the BEST, and I will die on this hill! We can learn so much about book history from wear and tear, and there are plenty of projects and discoveries that do just that. This video is my love letter to well-loved books!
Sometimes it’s cool to judge a book by its cover! In my new video, learn about the history of publisher’s cloth bindings, and why they’re so eye-catching (But also, sometimes, dangerous ☠️)
Check out this INCREDIBLE Victorian scrapbook dollhouse recently sold by Type Punch Matrix Every page is a unique collage of cuttings from books and magazines, and wallpaper samples! It’s probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, tbh
What’s got 5 eyes and is red all over? This wild rubricated initial!
The initials in this incunable (incunable=book printed before 1500) are all some flavor of amazing, but these three are some of my favorites In 1477, when this book was published, a book would often feature printed text but hand-finished decorative initials. The artist in charge of these initials certainly had a good time! From the Smithsonian Libraries copy of Vincent of Beauvais’s “Speculum naturale”
What’s book history got to do with Magic the Gathering? A lot, actually! From the design of the card backs to key gameplay elements, books permeate the world of Magic.
I recently gave a talk about the artistic and mechanical importance of books in Magic, and what we can learn about the concept of the book as an object through card art. I spoke with artists Heather Hudson, Aaron Miller, Randy Gallegos, and Daniel Ljunggren to get a sense of what sources they used, and how they imagined books fitting into the wider world of MTG.
What’s book history got to do with Magic the Gathering? A lot, actually! From the design of the card backs to key gameplay elements, books permeate the world of Magic.
I recently gave a talk about the artistic and mechanical importance of books in Magic, and what we can learn about the concept of the book as an object through card art. I spoke with artists Heather Hudson, Aaron Miller, Randy Gallegos, and Daniel Ljunggren to get a sense of what sources they used, and how they imagined books fitting into the wider world of MTG.
Happy Fore-Edge Friday!✨ There’s nothing like a good gauffered and gilt edge… it makes any book feel like a treasure chest Gauffering is the technique of pressing a heated tool into the edges of a book to make an indentation; it’s similar to the way book covers are tooled! This lovely edge belongs to an 1861 edition of Eliza Cook’s Poems, part of my personal collection
Do you follow me on Instagram? I’m Book_Historia over there! I tend to post with more frequency over there, so pop over and check me out!
Earlier this year the Alexander Turnbull Library received a generous bequest from the estate of Mt John Barton, a New Zealand book collector resident in the town of New Plymouth.
Mr Barton (1931-2016) was born on Mersea Island off the coast of Essex, England. Around 1954, his family immigrated to New Zealand and settled in Taranaki. He followed suit two years later, first finding work with the Department of Lands and Survey before being employed as a radiographer at the Taranaki Base Hospital in New Plymouth where he remained until 1978. A few years later he took up employment with Kea Books, a second-hand bookshop located on Devon St. Barton’s bibliophilic mind was well suited to the work. He spent the rest of his working career there and retired as manager in 1991.
The bequest comprised 20 books printed during the 15th and early 16th centuries. Theology is the most prevalent subject, with the earliest publication being a collection of Pseudo-Augustinian tracts (shown here) printed in the town of Lauingen, Germany, in 1472 - one of only two titles printed in Lauingen during the 15th century. It is a remarkable little book typographically, as its roman type is one of the earliest produced in Germany and is unique to this edition.
Cataloguing of the collection is nearing completion and the books will soon be available for study.
Pseudo-Augustine, De anima et spiritu. Add: De ebrietate. De sobrietate. De quattuor virtutibus caritatis. De contritione cordis. [Lauingen: Printer of Augustinus, ‘De consensu evangelistarum’], 9 Nov. 1472, Alexander Turnbull Library, R407716.
Happy Title Page Tuesday! This fantastic 1561 Latin edition of Mattioli’s herbal is a part of the Croughan donation, which we wrote about here. As you can see, this particular copy has not had a quiet life tucked away on library shelves - it looks like it’s been used for quite a bit of penmanship practice by previous owners! Once books arrive in our library, we don’t allow users to leave personalized marks, but it’s always fun to find traces that tells us about a book’s past, even the ones that might seem somewhat irreverent.
