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About
UNT Special Collections holds many rare artifacts, specimens, books, and manuscripts that enable students and faculty to trace the evolution of the book across human history. With roots in social, cultural, and materials studies; book history plays an important role in a variety of disciplines.
Featured Books and Collections
Medieval manuscripts, pages, and fragments
Original manuscripts dating from the 12th-18th century in Special Collections are available for research and classroom use. The collection includes The De Fonette Book of Hours (1500), the Farley Katz collection of manuscript fragments from book bindings, and the Specimina Paleeographica (1100-1798).
Early Printed Books
Books printed prior to the invention of automated printing technology demonstrate the evolution of printing and book making. Special Collections holds many significant examples of early printed work including:
- Opera philosophica et epistolae 1478
- Boetius de consolatione 1491
- Liber chronicarum (The Nuremberg Chronicle), 1493
- West-European incunabula: 60 original leaves from the presses of the Netherlands, France, Iberia and Great Britain
- German incunabula : 110 original-leaves
- Italian incunabula : 110 original-leaves
Printing Technology
- Printing plates, lithographic stones, type setters’ tools and paper making supplies are available for classroom use
Illustration
- Della historia vinitiana, containing woodcut illustrations of heroes and monsters, 1552
- Les Chats, with engraving attributed to Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, 1727
- The complaint, and the consolation, or, Night thoughts, with illustrations by William Blake
- The Paradise lost of Milton, with illustrations designed and engraved by John Martin, 1827
- México y sus alrededores, with 41 lithographic plates, 1858
Examples of Artistic Bindings
The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, 1882 (Vellucent Binding)
This volume is possibly an early example of vellucent decoration, with simple painted decorations in the art nouveau style. It is bound in full custom vellucent binding with six art nouveau style lilies hand-painted under the vellum. All page edges are gilt, and it has a fore-edge painting of a lily matching the ones on the binding.
Coaching days and coaching ways, 1901 (Vellucent Binding)
This splendid example of a vellucent binding showcases the possibilities of the style. The hand-painted decoration and delicate mother-of-pearl inlays are protected by the vellum, which has been made transparent by a process developed by Cedric Cheevers.
Vanity fair: a novel without a hero, 1848 (Cosway Binding)
Bound by Bayntun (Riviére), Bath, England, as a commission for a dealer, this first edition of the classic Vanity fair was enhanced with a custom binding featuring a hand-painted portrait of the author. The Cosway name for this binding is from miniature painter Richard Cosway (1742-1821). He did not paint for bindings, but the style of miniatures used in bindings resemble his works. The volume is bound in full blue leather with gilt decorations, wide leather turn-ins, and marbled paper paste-downs.
Highlights in Historic Bindings
Grammaticus, 1500 (Wooden Board Binding with Clasp)
One of the oldest complete original bindings in the Collection, the Grammatica is typical of early “hardback” bindings – a sewn text laced into wooden boards with enough leather to hold it together. This text is bound in contemporary blind rolled quarter calf over wooden boards, with remnants of applied hand-written paper spine label. Sewn on three sets of double cords. Decorated metal and leather clasp extending from lower cover to catch at upper cover. Some blind tooling is visible in third spine compartment, and the volume has intact plain white endbands. Cords laced into channels in wooden covers are exposed in some areas.
Two German titles printed by Johan Beyer, 1591 (Tooled Pigskin Binding)
These two titles are bound in a single ornate volume typical of German bindings of their era. Bound in contemporary elaborately blind stamped paneled full pigskin over wooden boards, the innermost of the 3 panels on front cover is stained brown, and it retains its original clasps and catches. The decorative tooling creates a type of “low-relief” sculptural feel.
Nemesis Karulina, 1599 (Vellum Leaf Binding)
This example of a “practical binding” made use of a hard-wearing piece of vellum salvaged from an unwanted illuminated manuscript from the 1400s. The illuminated manuscript used for the cover has text from Luke 7:43. The sewing is visible and remains of a paper label with inked inscription are at the top of the spine.
Epicurus’s morals, 1670 (Restoration Binding)
This volume is bound in period dark "somber" black morocco leather with ornate blind-tooling of four-petalled conventional flowers springing from a pair of leaves, framed by drawer handle motifs, acorns, grapes, and pointelle decoration. The spine is blind-tooled with raised bands and the title gilt on a red leather applied label. The book features marbled end-papers and all text edges are stained black. The style is characteristic of, and attributed to, the Queens' Binder B. This binding typifies the English Restoration. When Charles II assumed the crown, the somber world of Cromwell’s Protectorate was quickly replaced with sumptuous decoration and excess. The group of 3 or 4 binders known to have worked for several Queens of England produced lavish bindings covered with gilt tooling. In this example the “serious” binding is as impressive – just without the gold.
The Holy Bible, 1849 (Papier Mache Binding)
This volume is bound in publisher's black papier-mâché binding simulating carved wood, consisting of three panels (upper and lower covers and spine). Parts of the original clasp are intact and all edges of the pages are gilt and goffered with a pattern of crossed lines and flowerheads. Thought of today as a Victorian binding, when new this volume would have been intended to conjure images of what the romantic might have thought of as an Elizabethan binding.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 1820 (Victorian Cloth Binding)
In 1820, William Pickering published his miniature edition of Horace, with copies available in cloth – considered the first instance of an edition binding in cloth. These early bindings were a plain cloth, which was quickly replaced by a textured cloth, which developed into cloth embossed with basic decoration, which quickly became full-blown ornate stamping with gold. As time and art styles moved along, cloth bindings became more stylish and accommodated changing tastes, eventually featuring printed illustrations. Examples of Victorian cloth bindings are numerous in our collection.
Chaudron’s spelling book, 1865 (“Necessity Binding”)
Due to a lack of paper at the end of the Civil War, this volume’s wrappers are made from pieces of wallpaper, glued "pattern to pattern," leaving blank surfaces on which to print title information. This rare survival shows practicality during times of scarcity. Children still needed to learn, even during wartime, and schoolbooks needed to be bound in something.
Digital Collections and Exhibits
“Understanding Fragmentology: Collecting and Studying Medieval Manuscript Fragments,” a lecture given by Farley Katz, March 29, 2000.
