Außen-Ansichten: Bucheinbände aus 1000 Jahren aus den Beständen der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München (review)

On the occasion of the eleventh meeting of the Arbeitskreis Einbandforschung, held at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in 2006, ninety of the most spectacular and interesting historical bindings in the library's collection were exhibited, dating from the eleventh to the twentieth century. The catalogue of this exhibition is a worthy witness to the splendid holdings of the library. Bettina Wagner, the curator in charge of the exhibition and the general editor of the catalogue, introduces the collection, which finds its origin in the sixteenth-century Münchener Hofbibliothek of the Dukes of Wittelsbach, with a brief overview of the stylistic development of binding decoration. Treasure bindings from the Middle Ages, Renaissance bindings for monarchs and the nobility, and monastic bindings are found side by side with a few documents relating to bookbinding, including the first Munich guild regulations of 1596 and four bookbinders' manuals.

Most bindings in the exhibition come from southern Germany or were made for Bavarian patrons, but there are also a number of international examples, setting German binding production in its European context.

The most spectacular pieces are no doubt the medieval treasure bindings that reached the library after the secularization of the monasteries. An eleventh-century Lectionary and its companion Gospel-book are decorated with carved ivory panels (possibly once forming the decoration of the upper and lower covers of one binding), surrounded by gilt-chased rims; the binding of another eleventh-century Lectionary combines a late-antique ivory panel showing a consul and winged Victory with a late-eleventh-century German ivory set in a Romanesque border. Jewelled metal bindings, witnesses to the art of medieval goldsmiths and of the veneration of the word of God, include a metal book-box for a Regensburg manuscript of c. 1025, displaying Christ in Majesty and the symbols of the four evangelists, surrounded by precious stones and enamels. Even more stunning is the Ottonian gold and jewelled binding of the Reichenau Gospel book, dating from the beginning of the eleventh century, showing elaborate filigree work, finely chiselled animals and birds, pearls, precious stones, and a large central agate. Two silver-gilt and gilt-copper bindings, one dating from the early twelfth century with a mid-tenth-century Constantinople ivory, the other dating from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, both served as reliquaries.

The collection contains a number of perhaps less dazzling but equally interesting and often quite splendid leather bindings given to monasteries by emperors, noblemen, bishops, and other clergy. Earlier manuscripts that were still in use in monasteries could be rebound, usually when a new library room was fitted out or the library was reorganized. An example is an early-eleventh-century binding on an eighth-century manuscript from the Domkapitel in Freising. A beautiful blind-tooled Parisian Romanesque binding forms an interesting contrast to several German monastic products. Less sturdy medieval bindings are also represented by a limp parchment wallet binding, sewn with a long stitch through leather pieces on the spine, light enough to carry around. Books intended to be carried often come in the shape of girdle-books — small breviaries for monks, bound in wooden boards covered in leather, but with extensions to the leather that could be tucked into one's girdle, or, for the larger formats, such as law books, slung over one's shoulder.

Soon after the invention of printing the book trade became increasingly international and Italian books were available in southern Germany, such as a 1470 Pliny in a late-fifteenth-century Italian cut-leather binding, its design enhanced with gold paint, which was in Tegernsee in 1487. The Benedictine monastery of Tegernsee itself also produced cut-leather bindings, such as a fine example of c. 1480, showing a full-length figure of St Dorothea with the Christ-child.

Several late-Gothic German bindings in blind-tooled...