Rare Book Bindings from the Strahov Library in Prague. From the Gothic to the treshold of the Baroque
Abstract
This publication is being published in Czech (ISBN 978-80-88009-18-4), English (ISBN 978-80-88009-19-1) and German (ISBN 978-80-88009-20-7) on the nine hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Premonstratensian Order. So its second goal is much more obvious - for the general public, to open the door at least a little to the rich art collections of the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov.
The text is divided into 50 headings (with 135 photographs), ranked chronologically according to the undisputed or assumed year of manufacture. If the earlier scholarly literature only put emphasis on the inventorisation and formalistic description of bookbinding tools, then the positivist accumulation of facts cannot be disregarded today, but we must in future build into any modern history of bookbinding, from which we are a very long way away, the socio-cultural aspects of society and not just facts about the major book collectors of the time.
That is why I am trying for the first time in the domestic professional literature to place bookbinding deeper within book culture and to draw attention to the connection and difference with book type, decoration and illustration. These interdisciplinarily conceived passages extend the existing methodological approaches, and although they are brief, to the detriment of the matter, they go far beyond the scope of similar publications.