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Tag: Bookbindings

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Marking Books and Bookmarks: Evidence of Provenance and Use in the Fagel Collection

By Jenny Coulton

Jenny Coulton worked with the Fagel Collection during a month-long placement at the Library of Trinity College Dublin, as part of an internship with Durham University’s Archives and Special Collections Department. She will be starting a DPhil in medieval history at The University of Oxford in 2023.  

When Trinity College Dublin purchased Hendrik Fagel the Younger’s (1765–1838) estimated 20,000 volumes in 1802, it was not a library of new, clean books. Some of the items had passed through numerous hands and institutions before finally arriving in the Old Library, and still today bear the marks of their previous lives on their leaves.

The names and signatures of previous owners in Fagel volumes were recorded in 1962 by the Dutch book historian Ernst Braches, in annexes IV and V of his report. As part of my placement with the Library of Trinity College Dublin, I supplemented Braches’ annexes with binding descriptions, images and transcriptions of inscriptions and associating named individuals with authority files wherever possible. Through this, I examined numerous forms of provenance evidence, and in this post, I detail the types of evidence I encountered, and reflect on how these marks might be used to explore the acquisition, use, and organisation of books by private readers.

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Another beautiful collection

Last year, Research Collections was lucky enough to acquire a collection of 52 beautiful books with fine bindings and fore-edge paintings. They were donated by Bettina Bollmann, who had joined her mother Elsbeth over several decades in assembling them. This is the most important collection of bindings to be acquired by the Library in over 200 years.

Pictured in the main image are Principal Librarian, Early Printed Books & Special Collections, Dr Lydia Ferguson  and donor, Bettina Bollmann.

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Conserving Quires for the Choirs

A comparison between five medieval manuscripts

By project conservator Angelica Anchisi

During my first year on the Carnegie Project, I had the opportunity to work on a group of five 15th-century manuscripts, mostly antiphonaries (choir books), ranging in size from 40×30 cm (TCD MS 101) to 54x38cm (TCD MS 77).

Three of the manuscripts (TCD MSS 77, 78 and 79) presented themselves, as is the case of a large number of other manuscripts from this period, in a typical 18th-century binding that had been “Executed for the College in 1741-1744 by the shop of John Exshaw of Dublin in speckled calf”; whether the original contemporary binding had been discarded during this process, or if the manuscripts had already been rebound before 1741, it’s difficult to say.

What is certain is that the contemporary medieval binding was replaced with a typical 18th-century full leather structure with hemp sewing supports laced-into laminated boards. At a later stage all three of the manuscripts were rebacked in the early 1900s with the use of poor-quality leather.

Figure 1: TCD MS 77 image of spine before conservation.
Figure 2: TCD MS 77 image of spine after conservation.
Figure 1 and 2: TCD MS 77 spine before and after conservation.
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On Display. The Fagel Family’s Copy of Maria Sibylla Merian’s ‘Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium’ (1719)

Page of text facing an illustration of a bird-eating spider

By Emily Mattern

Emily Mattern completed an MPhil in the History of Art at Trinity College Dublin in 2022. The following text is based on the research for her dissertation entitled Materiality, Meaning, and Metamorphosis: The Work of Maria Sibylla Merian in the Fagel Collection at Trinity College Dublin (2022).

First Encounter with the Fagel Metamorphosis

Although the works of natural history found within the Fagel Collection are limited in number, they are some of the collection’s most visually striking objects. As a multi-generational library amassed by high-ranking Dutch citizens, the Fagel Collection demonstrates an interest in various subjects. Even so, the men who amassed and maintained it routinely favored items which would prove beneficial in upholding their official duties as greffier of the States General. Because the Fagels prioritized practical texts, it is no surprise that natural history volumes comprise only about 2.6% of the collection (Fox 89). More remarkable is the exquisite ornamentation of these books, as exemplified by one second-edition copy of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (Fag.GG.2.10 no.1).

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Loose Book Illustrations in the Fagel Map Portfolios

by Emily Monty

Dr Emily Monty was the Fagel Collection Visiting Research Fellow in autumn 2022. She was hosted by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute at Trinity College Dublin. You can view a conversation between Emily and Ann-Marie Hansen, Project Manager of Unlocking the Fagel Collection here.

The Fagel Collection holds important material history for the study of publishing and collecting in the Dutch Republic of the eighteenth-century. The map portfolios alone contain over 1600 sheets and represent an extraordinary collection of rare and unusually well-preserved materials. Such collections of loose print and manuscript images in their original portfolios rarely survive intact, making the Fagel examples all the more important from the perspective of material and cultural history.

During a three-month Visiting Research Fellowship at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), I came across a series of illustrations for an eighteenth-century travel narrative of the Caribbean in Portfolio XXII. These precious fragments of a larger illustration project reveal material evidence about practices in book publishing and collecting in The Hague, and give insight into the other discoveries that are waiting to be made as scholars continue to study the portfolio prints and related books held in the Fagel collection. In the following blog post, I describe my research methods and conclusions in hopes of promoting future research on the contents of these portfolios.

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