#bookbindings

[u-mspcoll]

Out in the reading room recently, Isl. Ms. 259, manuscript copy of a selection of texts on qirāʼāt with stunning lacquerwork covers. Browse the description and the entire manuscript online!

[professorpski]

Re-binding the Disintegrating Book

I am not blogging this book today, but merely its binding, or rather its re-binding. More than once now I have gotten my hands on a hardcover or a softcover books whose binders should have been ashamed of themselves. Said book’s binding disintegrated upon reading. And with cookbooks and craft books, this is especially annoying as you hoped to use them repeatedly.

There is a solution: get yourself to your local copy shop and see that they can do for you. If there is enough of an inside margin, they will offer you a few options for re-binding and for what to do about the cover, and, voila, your book is back in good shape.

I will be blogging this book by Margaret Radcliffe, so stay tuned.

[hdslibrary]

A View from Above

One of the rare pleasures during a long project of moving collections around is that you get the chance to see things from new and different perspectives. Here we were struck by the variety of color of staining on the top edges of these special collections books--something you wouldn't see when they are finally at home on their shelves.

[noelcollection]

These images come from a late Sixteenth Century printing of the Dietenberger Bible. Dietenberger undertook this translation (from Latin Vulgate into vernacular German) shortly after the Protestant Reformation. Dietenberger's Bible varied from the Lutheran version, which modified key passages considered integral to Catholic tradition. Dietenberger's work was just one of several Catholic Bible translations published in the wake of the reformation.

Images from: Dietenberger, Johannes. Catholische Bibell Das ist Alle Bücher der H. Schrifft beide Alts vñ Newen Testamēts. Zu Cöln : Durch Geruinum Calenium / vnd die Erben Johan Quentels, im Jar 1571.

Call Number: BS237 1571

Catalog Record: https://bit.ly/3rQt4Mu

[kecobe]

Luxury Bookbinding of the Belle Époque, 1879 Front doublure Binding by: Victor Champs (French; 1844–1912) The New York Public Library, Spencer Collection

Title: Physiologie du goût de Brillat-Savarin (Paris: Jouaust, 1879) Half dark green crushed levant morocco; back lettered in gilt; with marbled end papers and rough edges; gilt top

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Shelf Reading in Special Collections

For those of you not familiar with library lingo, shelf reading is the process of checking a collection for improperly shelved materials.

Without patrons, we are now getting a chance in Special Collections to do some collection care. Check card catalog, check shelf, repeat ad nauseam. Shelf reading is never terribly exciting, but we have found some interesting bindings. 

It’s also good to iron out the occasional mis-shelving from decades of patron requests...  You never know what you have until you’ve had to shift every single book!

[joannemerriam]

Victorian publishers' bookbindings - from "a selection of gold-blocked publishers' cloth bookbindings of the 19th and early 20th" (National Library NZ on The Commons)