X Pattern
So few bindings survive from the turn of the 13th century that we are unsure as how to even begin to describe the clasp and pin binding covering this medieval encyclopaedia. Practical? Understated? Persistent? We are especially taken by the secondary endband worked in an X pattern at the top of its spine.
Expurgated
Every occurrence of the word ‘Pape’ has been effaced in the incunable Bolton Library Q.20, a very popular and much reprinted history of the world – up to 30 editions in several languages by the turn of the 16th century – pointing to the possibility that it was at one stage in the possession of a zealous reformer.
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