During my treatment of a 15th-century German incunable (Vnum ex quatuor seu [con]cordia euangelista[rum]…), I observed a parchment guard wrapping around the first and last sections, which were composed of paper. Intrigued by this feature, I began searching for additional examples. Many incunabula and manuscripts with paper textblocks from this time period include parchment guards, a transitional reinforcement method as bookbinding shifted from parchment to paper textblocks. The degree of reinforcement changed over time, ranging from full parchment sheets in every quire to narrow strips wrapping only the first and last quires.

One example of German incunables revealed a unique guard feature—small tabs of parchment protruding from the gutter. I was puzzled initially, but then discovered that these tabs were also a form of parchment guard. The binding was created by the Drachenrolle Bindery in Ulm, Germany. The Morgan holds a few more bindings from the same bindery, one of which also has this distinctive tab-guard feature.

Learn more about this research by visiting the blog post I wrote on The Morgan Library’s website.