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There is compelling evidence of the use by the booktrade from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries of partly-completed sewn bindings with permanent structures, with or without boards, but without permanent covers. They allowed books to be held together as they went through the booktrade, added little extra weight and would have been relatively inexpensive. Evidence for their use can be found in archival sources, trade regulations and depictions in art, but mostly in the 82 sewn bookblocks without boards that have so far been recorded. They can be identified by a careful examination of their various and varied physical features, which present a complex variety of options. The survival of composite volumes raises the question of who commissioned the bindings. What is not in doubt, however, is that they were an established feature of the booktrade, though the extent to which they were used is as yet unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional book manifests itself in a physical form which is subject to the circumstances of its creation and its subsequent history. The bookbinder is part of that history, occupying the place between the creation of the physical text and its consumption by its readers, whether they are members of the elite or at the lowest end of the economic spectrum. The work of the binder will therefore reflect both the economic and cultural circumstances of the creation of all books and when and where they were made, through variations in the techniques and materials used to make each binding. A close analysis of bindings will therefore cast light on the history of each book and the history of the book and the booktrade in general. The use of sewn bookblocks without cover or boards as a means of presenting books for sale and of limp covers in paper as early as the second decade of the sixteenth century both reveal the economic workings of the booktrade and how people bought their books. The presence on a single binding of the evidence of different cultural influences and national practices can reveal the cosmopolitan nature of the booktrade, just as details of the way in which a book was bound can reveal how individual owners regarded their books. They are essential components of the history of the book, and should be preserved so that they can play their part in the revealing the archaeology of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to create viable bookblocks, binders presented with problematic textblocks resorted to a number of strategies to create out of what they were given the gatherings they needed in order to sew the books and allow boards and/or covers to be attached to them. These are what might be called “binders' gatherings” as they are quite distinct from the gatherings envisaged by the writers or printers of books, and often cut across them in ways that can confuse those who try to work out how the books were first printed or written. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Band 1 E 22 is a copy of Calvin's In viginti prima Ezechielis Prophetae capita Praelectiones (1565) and belonged to the French lawyer and resident of Geneva, Germain Colladon. The manuscript leaves used for this binding are early medieval and unusual in being very carefully positioned on the binding. Nicholas Pickwoad's account of the binding reconstructs and explains how the binder used the medieval manuscript leaves to display them on an otherwise very conventional French-style binding and highlights its significance in the history of bookbinding. Rosamond McKitterick identifies the text of both leaves as part of an Epistle Lectionary, or possibly a full Mass Lectionary, and demonstrates how the script, decoration, and mise-en-page enable these leaves to be recognized as the work of the scribes and artists working for Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, king of the Franks (840-77) and Emperor (875-77). It can be dated c.860. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]