This summer, Salem Twiggs, Oak Spring Garden Library Associate, had the opportunity to attend a course on the history of bookbinding at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. She shares her experience and takeaways from the course below.
This past July, I attended Dr. Karen Limper-Herz’s course on the history of bookbinding at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. The Rare Book School curriculum emphasizes “reading the whole book,” which means studying the book as a physical object and not just as a means of conveying knowledge. In particular, examining a book’s binding can reveal far more about its origins or former owners than the title page alone. In the trade, the study of an object’s ownership history is known as provenance, and certain binding features offer valuable clues about a book’s past. The Rare Book School course combined lectures on the history of various binding styles with hands-on bookbinding labs and museum sessions to view examples from UVA’s extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts. Learning about bindings in this holistic way deepened my appreciation for the remarkable volumes held in the Oak Spring Garden Library.
One of my favorite works in the Oak Spring Garden Library collection is a 14th-century German manuscript, Buch de Natur, attributed to Konrad von Megenberg (German, 1309–1374). A manuscript is a handwritten and typically unpublished work. Some are bound like printed books, while others remain as loose materials. This Buch de Natur is the oldest item in the library’s collection, estimated to have been written around 1350. It includes fascinating illustrations of animals and plants, including a very charming dog with the feet of a bird. Its large size and plain, heavy binding give it a striking physical presence.
Typical of early manuscripts and early printed works, it is bound with covered wooden boards. Interestingly, although it is a German manuscript, the boards are not beveled—they are cut flush with the text block rather than angled. This absence of beveling, a common feature in early German bookbinding, may suggest an intention for later rebinding or perhaps a custom binding request by an early owner. The boards appear to be covered in deerskin, though the aging of the leather makes it difficult to identify a clear follicle pattern that would definitively indicate the animal. This leather has a pinkish red hue to it, possibly due to red dye being used on a less porous lighter color leather.
The binding also features large metal studs, known as bosses, which serve both as decoration and as protection for the boards. Books and manuscripts were sometimes fitted with clasps for added protection. On the Buch de Natur, remnants of two clasps survive on the lower cover. Clasp placement is another binding feature that can help suggest provenance: the clasps on the lower board that fasten to the upper board confirm that this is a German work of the medieval period. In contrast, English and French bindings typically place clasps on the upper board that fasten to the lower.
The spine has raised double bands with a loose weave cloth visible underneath for support. Bands are sewn supports that run across the spine. They may be raised and visible, or they may be recessed into the text block, meaning the full stack of pages that make up the body of the book, and then covered to create a smooth spine. In the Buch de Natur, the text block is level with the edges of the covered boards, which is typical of older German manuscripts…