Grading a Rare Book
Posted by Richard Gabriel on Tue, Feb 09, 2010 @ 11:36 AM
Grading a book is slightly different for a modern first edition than it is for an incunabula or older books with no dust jacket. The value of modern first editions lies not only in the book itself, the author and its condition but also a large contributor to the value of a modern first edition is the dust jacket. We will talk more about modern first editions later.
It is helpful to have some understanding of how books are built, todays' processes for manufacturing books probably won't stand up to the test of time but unfortunately, only time will tell whether or not these books can last several hundreds of years of handling and just normal book abuse. Older books, those printed before 1500 are called incunabula and proper single, incunabulum. This all started with Gutenberg's creation of the movable type and later the Italians casting metal type letters instead of hand carved wooden ones. The paper was made out of 100% cotton or rags, bleached to a whiteness and beaten by hand as well as formed by hand. Prior to this, the preferred writing material was velum or finely stretched and beaten lamb skin but the inks of the printer would not sit well on the velum and it was expensive. Later on, cotton was mixed with beaten wood pulp so there were variations of paper making, our Incunabula, that we will spend some time on was printed by Koberger and he had control of his paper making as well as the binding of his books. The paper was manufactured in a single sheet and when folded in half, the printers would print both sides totaling 4 printed pages, this was a folio. Fold it again, and you have a quarto or 4to, fold it again and you have your standard book or 8vo. You can keep folding the paper and then looking at it, imagine cutting the top and the bottom but first laying out the printing so that when it is folded properly and slit and sewn, that all the pages are right side up and in the proper order. The books whether folios, quarto, octavo etc were collated or ordered by the binders and sewn together using a patterned sewing technique that gave compartments on the spine. Early on, wooden boards were covered with leather and sewn and glued to the previously sewn book. The whole thing was pressed, designs were worked into the leather prior to the final binding with various tools and embellishments and the interior of the book pages were often also embellished with colors and designs.
Why is all of this important to grading an incunabula? Because understanding how the book was made, even slightly, will help you look at a book before you plunk down several thousand dollars for something that was made, printed and sold during the Renaissance and has survived untold crisis and is now about to take on a new owner or keeper. So let's take a bird's eye view at one rare incunabula, Nicholas De Lyra's Volume 3 (of 4 volumes) of the Bible, printed by Anton Koberger in 1487 and probably bound by his shop as well.
The covers of the book are pigskin, stretched and glued onto wooden boards with numerous embellishments that may often give hints as to whom the original owner might be and in some cases may actually have the name of the owner on the book cover along with a date. In our case, we have some intriguing hints but no owners name, there is for example the The 'Rose' symbol all over the front and the back of the book along with a 'Running Stag' which could indicate this book was owned by a member of the Tudor family or at least someone who was associated with the Tudors. Also, given that there are numerous Stags running about and a combination of Flowers and what appears to be grapes or Lily and Grapes or seeds, an early Fleur de Lis (Lys), this bible set was probably made to order. There are three more volumes.
Overall a description of the book could read as follows: Period pigskin over wooden boards, lacking corner and center bosses on both sides. Tears at the head and toe of the spine and two clasps present but damaged. Multiple rose in rose details with a more elaborate Fleur de Lys and running Stags at the corners. Spine is four compartments with multiple, larger rose-in-rose symbols. Possible Tudor rose association. Some staining to the leather and the remains of labels from the spine.
The rose in the rose followed by:
Our early Fleur de Lys with what appears to be smaller roses or grapes and that followed by:
Our galloping Stag, which was a favorite of the house of Tudor and others as it symbolizes fertility, vitality and the hunt..Since the Tudor house controlled England, Scotland and parts of France and had relatives all over the known world at the time, it is possible that this particular set was owned by someone affiliated with the Tudors or perhaps was in contact with them because books were very symbolic and the symbols on these books often spoke about the families loyalties as well as their affiliations. Since this book was probably bound by the Koberger staff, it was bound to order with the instructions regarding the symbols. Just as a side note, Koberger was one of the wealthiest and most successful book printer, binder and publisher in Europe and sold his books through a network of agents across Europe and certainly in England.
On our next blog, we'll move into the interior of the book where worms, stains and signatures as well as where to find the title of the book which will perhaps tell us more about our Rare Koberger Incunabula.