#erikkwakkel

[upennmanuscripts]

Via Erik Kwakkel on Twitter: 

Look what I just found: super rare depiction of medieval readers in a chained library (Chantilly, Musée Condé, 0297 (1338), 15th c)

Folio 71v, online here

[mj05209]

Six books, one binding Here’s something special. You may remember a blog I posted about dos-à-dos (or “back-to-back”) books. These are very special objects consisting of usually two books, which were bound together at their, well, backs. When you were done with the one book, you would flip the object and read the other. The dos-à-dos book you see here is even more special. Not only is it a rather old one (it was bound in the late 16th century), but it contains not two but six books, all neatly hidden inside a single binding (see this motionless pic to admire it). They are all devotional texts printed in Germany during the 1550s and 1570s (including Martin Luther, Der kleine Catechismus) and each one is closed with its own tiny clasp. While it may have been difficult to keep track of a particular text’s location, a book you can open in six different ways is quite the display of craftsmanship. Pic: Stockholm, Royal Library. See the full image gallery here.

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