Special book bindings

The KB has a history of collecting bindings with particularities in their technique or material. Historical as well as modern bindings are included here. As to technique: these can be bindings with quires that are connected in an unusual way, or bindings that close in an exceptional way. Examples: a binding with quires sown onto strips, which have been fixed between metal strips, a binding sown onto a metal pipe or a binding where a row of mountains in balsa wood can be slipped into the head edges of the cover, which thus forms the clasp. Other examples are twin bindings, where the back cover of one book is also that of the other, or multiple bindings, which can be constructed even more intricately. Special materials used for binding are for instance tortoise shell, silver, gold, leather processed as if it were sharkskin (it is actually called that), rayskin and wood, inlaid or not.

Twin bindings: two bindings that belong together, the back cover of one binding is also that of the other. Executed in purple goatskin with inlaid calfskin in blue and silver stamped with palladium, by the American artistic bookbinder Silvia Rennie-Nussio, 1987. The waving design, which seems to flow when the two books are moved around each other, is a reference to the water needed for handmade paper. Both volumes contain paper samples (Shelf-number 1771 D 105).

Box in the shape of a book binding, made by the Middelburg book binder Suenonius Mandelgreen in 1757. In contrast to contemporary customs, the binding is signed and dated. The hollow inside contains a miniature book-case holding miniature books. The eleven volumes mainly deal with religious topics. The small books in their costly box were given to the young Willem van Borssele by two Middelburg publishers and the binder Mandelgreen (Shelf-number 1793 F 106). For a more detailed description see also: A hundred highlights from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.