Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis - Volume 30, Issue 2023, 2023

The psalms were deeply ingrained in late-medieval religious culture and practice. This article investigates how readers of Middle Dutch psalters handled these books and how they included the psalms in their religious practices. It focusses on the material evidence in about fifty copies of the incunable editions of the popular Devotio Moderna psalm translation. Ownership inscriptions, annotations, and instances in which the psalter was bound together with other texts in manuscript and print, reveal the active involvement of owners and users in shaping these books. Moreover, by adapting their books, the predominantly female reading public of these psalters also proves to have shaped their own religious reading practices.

Unorthodox as it may seem, 3D printing can be applied in book production. This contribution features seven books for which the 3D printer has been used. Three of the featured works have a 3D printed binding; they have been custom made, and hand-bound, by artisanal bookbinders in collaboration with 3D print designers. Another work, published in a regular print run, comes in a 3D printed slipcase. The fifth work is a unique production by a designer and an author; its pages, all in braille, are 3D printed. The final two works have been 3D printed in their entirety – pages and binding: one is the result of a mass project with hundreds of participants, and the other a designer’s individual project.

The 3D printer offers novel possibilities for making books as well as new perspectives on book design, as it re-emphasizes the three-dimensionality of the material object.

In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic formed a popular destination on Polish educational tours through Europe. This article examines which travel guides and other printed media in particular steered the gazes and quills of Polish noblemen who journeyed through the Dutch Republic, and how these Poles used such publications to reflect on their own experiences. Analysing several travelogues and a collection of travel poems, it argues that Poles made use of various locally printed sources to determine their itineraries, define their experiences and add visual elements to their travelogues. The Itinerarium Frisio-Hollandicum by Gotfridus Hegenitius, a Latin travel guide first published in Leiden in 1630, was evidently popular, enabling the transfer of Dutch narratives to Polish sources. In addition, Polish itinerants instrumentalised ephemeral inventories of Leiden’s curiosities, as well as loose prints. In effect, locally printed material conditioned how Poles gave substance to their travels in the Dutch Republic, each of them following their own designs.

The ten medieval Frisian law manuscripts of Tresoar’s Richthofenkolleksje first came together in the collection of the Frisian notary Petrus Wierdsma (1729-1811). He had five of them rebound in decorated bindings. By way of analysis of the tools used for the decoration, particular technical features and Wierdsma’s use of the manuscripts, four bindings are attributed to the Frisian Prize Bindery and, moreover, five new tools are added to the bindery’s corpus. The fifth binding is attributed to the Daffodil Bindery. Subsequently, the archive of the estate of Friesmastate enables linking the Frisian master bookbinder Roelof Hunia to the Daffodil Bindery. He worked for many prominent Frisians and crossed paths with Wierdsma on several occasions. The research demonstrates how linking decorative tools, provenance information and archival records is helpful in identifying unknown craftspeople and gaining insight into their biographies. This is important, as their work fills our historic libraries and determines their appearance.