Romanesque bookbinding from the British Library

 A major highlight for me on my trip to Europe was visiting the British Library and finally inspecting books that I've only read about. I wrote about how I one can go about getting that privilege here, so I won't go into that on this post. Instead, I'm going to totally geek out on the books that I saw.

There were six books on my list to see, which I've listed below. I was allowed to see those marked with a star.

• Liber Exechials, Davis 80
• Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Davis 386
• Modus poenitendi..., IA 4708
• SALOMONIS, Add Ms 24076 *
• Gospels of Luke and John, Add Ms 27926 *
• Theological and ethical, Add Ms 38820 *

As I mentioned in the earlier post, taking pictures weren't allowed of any of these books, which meant that I had to take notes and draw pictures to try to remember the important bits and bobs that I found. Unfortunately, I can't draw well at the best of times, and my right hand is damaged right now, so it's not even the mediocre of times. Nonetheless, I'm going to try to share what I learned.

Oh. First, I'm going to note that most of my knowledge about Romanesque bookbinding comes from two major researchers, J. A. Szirmai and Christopher Clarkson. Both of them, however, left major questions regarding this time period and the books made then. I once emailed Prof. Clarkson to ask him a question regarding the spine treatment of Romanesque books, to which he replied that there were any number of ways that they were handled, and that I needed to go to England to study the books myself if I really wanted to understand how the books were made. He died four months later, years before I was able to do as he suggested.

(Funny side note, he mentioned that he seemed to remember Szirmai asking him the same question and he thought he'd given Szirmai the same answer. Guys! Are you hearing this??? Squeee!)

Okay, so, back to the trip to the British Library. I knew that the chances of seeing the actual spine treatment of any of these books would be infinitesimal, but I wanted to see if some of my other assumptions about Romanesque books were on point. Let's go through them one by one. (All pictures of actual books that follow come from the British Library website.)

SALOMONIS

The British Library link for this book is here. That gives you all of the information regarding where and when the book was made and of what materials, so I won't go into any of that here. These are the notes that I made (ie that I found interesting or noteworthy about it). 

• Ends - Leather was cut off rather than tucked in
• End bands - Wide herring bone pattern at about 1 cm wide
• Boards - 3/8" thick and (at a guess) 5" x 9" (I forgot a ruler so all measurements are guesses)
• Pages - Protrude past the edges of the boards and are neatly trimmed; the book block was only as thick as the two boards together
• Sewing stations - Three sewing stations on double leather cords sewing with thick linen threads
• End pages - These were glued down over the leather cover; appeared to be the front and back pages of first and last quires
• Stamped leather design - Blind tooled in a symmetrical design as shown in the following pictures

Gospels of Luke and John

The British Library link is here. This one appears to be a combination binding, having been bound in the 13th or 14th century with the limoges enameled metal pieces, but stamped on the back at some time in the 15th century. At least, that's what the experts at the BL claim, and I don't think I'm the one to question them.

• Ends - Leather is tucked around the end bands, which I found fascinating having never seen that before; this only takes place on the page portion of the book
• End bands - No way of knowing as they're covered by the leather
• Boards - The top board is 1" thick, carved into for the metal pieces to set into; bottom board is 1/2" thick; roughly 4" x 10"
• Pages - Slightly protruding past boards, but I think they were even with the boards when it was first made. It's really hard to tell.
• Metal covering - Carved metal with limoges enameling and attached metal heads on the four figures; one major faceplate with four flat bars 1" wide framing the book cover; beveled flat bars of stamped diapering covering the beveled area between the faceplate and the framing bars
• Sewing stations - Three on leather thongs split for double sewing; appeared to be false sewing on the 1" board side of things. Looks like the top board only held on by the outer red leather and additional linen cloth at the spine which is not seen on the back board at all.
• End pages - Reused music sheets that were attached to the front and back quires

Theological and ethical

The British Library link is here. This book, like the two above, was bound in red leather, which appears to be fairly common across multiple countries. The interesting thing about this book was the three attached bookmarks. I don't think I've seen those before in a period book earlier than the 15th century. 

Additionally, because there weren't any end pages, the leather thong attachments to the boards were easily seen. They were mostly in line, of a similar size and shape, with the top three aiming toward the top and the bottom three aiming toward the bottom. (See the picture below and try to ignore my crappy drawing ability.)

• Ends - The leather is tucked flush with the end bands and glued down tightly
• End bands - Double end bands with an initial sewing in white linen then covered in a herring bone pattern in colored silk
• Boards - 1/4" thick top and bottom; 4" x 8"
• Pages - Protrude past the boards, trimmed neatly; book block is 2" thick
• Sewing stations - Six stations on a leather thong split and sewn double with thick linen thread
• End pages - None seen and it appears there were never any
• Bookmarks - Finger loop braided in the same color silk as the end bands and attached to the end bands

I found it interesting that all three books were bound in red leather. I'm not sure why that surprised me, except that it seemed odd that I randomly selected three books from the 12th century and all three had red leather. Something to dig into a bit more, I think. 

The metal-covered book fascinated me. I'm dying to try to make one similar to this one. It looked to me like the top board was only held on by the outer leather cover, which seems impossible given the weight of the board with the metal on it. So I want to play around with using the leather thongs, additional spine coverings for support, and the leather cover to see which works best. 

I also thought it was pretty cool that each of the three books treated the leather at the end of the spine differently, too. There isn't a right or wrong way, apparently, to do it so long as it's cleanly done. Also, what the what?? They tucked the leather over the end band on one?! Not at all what I ever expected to see.

Mostly, this showed me that I need to look up a whole lot more books with Romanesque bindings to get a feel for what's common and what an exception, or even if such a thing exists. I'm also hoping to contact the BL research librarian that I was working with to get pictures of the parts that I drew. I'll share them when I do.