In their broadest sense, the book arts are at the core of our inventory. To be sure, the category encompasses the specialties that you see on our homepage, such as Fine Printing, Fine Binding, and Illustrated Books. However, it also includes such things as writing books and calligraphy, fore-edge paintings, books on papermaking, and leaf books.
Read more about one of the book arts, Fore-edge Painting
(France: Mid-13th century). Single leaf measuring 203mm. by 140mm., written in a minute gothic hand in black ink with glosses in red. Text includes the last forty-three verses of Luke and all of the first chapter of John, plus chapter 2, verses 1 through 19. A small miniature at the... More
(Paris: c. 1240). Manuscript leaf, on vellum, with text in Latin. The leaf contains 50 lines of double-column text in fine Gothic script. On the recto, it includes a five-line initial in blue and red inks with flourishes radiating along the center margin, while another red and blue initial with... More
San Francisco: Grabhorn Press for David Magee, 1939. Small quarto. 17pp. One of 71 copies printed for David Magee at the Grabhorn Press. Apropos of its subject matter, Schulz's essay on Medieval culture and Gothic script is printed in an intricate script with a large opening initial in gold. Tipped... More
(c. 1470). A single miniature manuscript leaf from a fifteenth-century Dutch or German Psalter executed in a miniscule gothic hand. The text of the recto includes the last three verses of Psalm 144 and the first three and a half verses of Psalm 145. The leaf contains eight initials executed... More
Newtown, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 1992. Quarto. 40, (21)pp. One of 138 copies, each containing an original leaf from the first book printed on paper made in England. This book, the De Proprietatibus Rerum, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495. Written in the thirteenth century by Bartholomaeus... More
Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975. Folio. vii, 59pp. From an edition of 250 copies, this is one of fifty that contains a leaf with an original woodcut illustration. The volume contains five reprinted illustrations from the Brescia edition, one of which is a two-page spread of the city... More
Los Angeles: Kenneth Karmiole, Bookseller, Inc. 1985. Quarto. ix, 22, (2)pp. One of 159 copies with an original leaf inserted from the elder Zainer's edition of Hugo Ripelin's Compendium Theologiae Veritatis, Liber Quintus, printed in Ulm circa 1478-81. Translated from the German by Ruth Schwab-Rosenthal and with an introduction by... More
Los Angeles: Kenneth Karmiole, Bookseller, 1981. Quarto. 28pp. One of 164 copies. Scriptores Astronomici Veteres is a collection of Greek and Roman astrological texts, of which the most important is Maternus's Mathesis, the most extenstive astrological book from antiquity. Here, the original leaf is from Liber Octavus, printed by Aldus... More
San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1938. Quarto. 53pp. One of 297 copies printed for the Book Club of California by Edwin and Robert Grabhorn. Tipped-in is a leaf from the Polycronicon, with a rubricated initial on the recto and verso. It contains a passage on the campaigns of Cyrus the Great... More
(McMinnville, OR): Bird & Bull Press for Philip J. Pirages, 1991. Octavo. 132pp. One of 275 copies printed for Philip J. Pirages. The leaf is from a copy of Volume I of the Sweynheym and Pannartz first edition of Nicholas of Lyra's Postilla super totam bibliam, completed on 18 November... More
Akron & Evanston: Bruce Ferrini /Hamill & Barker, 1993. Folio. 40pp. One of 166 copies. With an original leaf from the fourth edition of the Latin Bible, printed by Gutenberg's successors. The leaf contains text from Deuteronomy 9:17 through 12:6, a significant passage in which Moses returns from Mount Sinai... More
Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Bernard Rosenthal and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, 1971. Folio. 13pp. One of 193 copies printed for Bernard Rosenthal and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge at the Plantin Press, with an original leaf printed on vellum by Peter Schoeffer at Mainz in 1472. It is one of... More
San Francisco: Grabhorn Press for David Magee, 1958. Octavo. 30pp. One of 200 copies printed for David Magee at the Grabhorn Press. This original leaf from a Book of Hours was likely written and illuminated in Paris during the first portion of the fifteenth century. It bears four initials accented... More
Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop, 1950. Tall quarto. 62pp. One of 300 copies printed by the Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop. The leaf is from the portion of the Chronicle on the sixth age of the world. It bears two woodcuts on the recto and six... More
New York: Ben Abramson, 1946. Small quarto. 48pp. One of 112 copies, each containing an original leaf from the 1497 edition of Hieronymus Brunschwig's Book of Chirurgia. The original leaf bears a nearly full-page woodcut on the recto, which shows evidence of having been created by piecing together two separately-carved... More
NY: Brick Row Book Shop, 1936. Folio. (6), 28pp. Library Edition. Contains an original leaf from the Catholicon of 1460, the production of which, as Stillwell argues in the essay within, should be credited to Johannes Gutenberg (some have argued that the second printing was achieved by Peter Schoeffer in... More
San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1977. Small quarto. ix, 67pp., + 12 plates. From an edition of 450 copies, this is one of 134 containing an original leaf from the first edition of Euclid's Elements, published by E. Ratdolt, Venice, in 1482. The leaf bears four five-line initials on... More
Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop, 1965. Folio. (1),14pp. From an edition 140 copies printed for Dawson's Book Shop by the Plantin Press, this is one of 100 copies accompanied by an original broadside and signed by the author. The document is a "carta de pago," or promise... More
San Francisco: Lawton and Alfred Kennedy for the Book Club of California, 1974. Folio. 45pp. One of 425 copies printed by Lawton and Alfred Kennedy for the Book Club of California. The leaf is from the Book of John. Religious controversy in England made it necessary for Myles Coverdale to... More
San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1938. Quarto. (2)ff.,15pp. One of 260 copies. The original leaf is from folio ccxiii of the Pynson 1509 edition. The essay by James D. Hart is decorated on each page with charming color-printed facsimiles of woodcut fools. Leaf lightly stained, else fine. Bound in linen-backed printed... More
San Francisco: (Grabhorn Press), 1939. 12mo. (9)pp. One of 55 copies. Tipped in after the title page, the leaf features a large woodcut of John Heywood at his desk. On the window behind him, several spiders observe a fly trapped in a web. On the verso of the page are... More
Austin: W. Thomas Taylor, 1995. Quarto. lxxxiv, 242pp., leaf tipped in at rear. One of 100 copies of the special first edition distributed for the Friends of the Brigham Young University Library by W. Thomas Taylor. Specially bound in quarter goatskin, with an original leaf from the 1524 Colines edition... More
NY: Society of Foliophiles, (1925). Quarto. One of 200 copies printed for the Society of Foliophiles, containing 20 original leaves from notable books of English literature from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Unbound, as issued, with each leaf in its respective, annotated folder measuring 12 1/2 by 9 1/2... More
Boston: Stinehour Press for Charles E. Goodspeed & Co, 1979. Octavo. (i), 10pp. One of 87 copies. With a tipped-in leaf from the Eliot Indian Bible, the first complete Bible printed in North America. John Eliot, a Puritan minister in Roxbury, Massachusetts, was known as the "Apostle to the Indians."... More
(Fullerton, CA): Stone & Lorson, 1985. Folio. 23pp. From an edition of 115 copies, this is one of 89 copies quarter-bound in vellum, together with an original bifolium leaf from the edition of 1619. This copy contains a full hand-colored map of Palatinatus Bavariae in southwestern Germany, complete with text... More
