Browse Items (259 total)

Many hands and many quills have annotated this work by Jerome de Hangest, a theologian hailing from Compiègne and a contemporary of Erasmus. The marginalias annotation, as is the text itself, are in Latin, which would indicate a certain amount of…

This work provides an example of the printer’s device of Swiss printer, Johann Froben (1460-1527). Based in Basel, Froben was a Humanist scholar himself, and was acquainted with Erasmus, as well as Hans Holbein the Younger, who would not only paint…

The front flyleaf has an elaborate inscription that is quite illegible due to its flamboyant handwriting. We do see the initial sentence “Souvenir de Pierre Grospin, dit le vieux grognard à M. Ballard.” These novellas parodying the bacchanalian seem…

The motif used here is an example of marbled paper with a small comb. The comb consists of a wooden stick with small metal spikes inserted into it. The smallness of the comb makes it possible to make turnstiles, which gives this particular…

The binding seen here is characteristic of the style of leather bindings where the calf leather is manipulated to give it texture. In this example, the leather is stained with drops of diluted acid to give the binding a mottled look. There are a…

The use of marbling reaches its pinnacle with this example, with its swirling motif, which appear to be created in a “freestyle” manner. Of special note with this work is the fact that the edges of the book have been decorated using a similar…

A laced-case binding in limp parchment with no support of boards; this was likely a temporary binding. The "laces" that are visible through the cover are actually slips or supports that are sewn into the spine to support the text block. The fact that…

This item’s binding is of black morocco (goatskin), one of the many colours that this very fine goatskin leather could be dyed with at the time. Its title appears in gilt on the spine, with gilt double borders on its front and back covers and gilded…

This post-incunabulum, an edition of Saint-Jerome’s works printed in Basel, Switzerland, has a binding typical of the first years of the 15th century, with its wooden boards and endpapers of manuscript waste.