A Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár 1601 előtti nyomtatványainak katalógusa (Budapest, 2001)
Mutatók - Rozsondai Marianne: Történeti könyvkötések a Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtárban
HISTORIC BINDINGS IN THE METROPOLITAN SZABÓ ERVIN LIBRARY ROZSONDAI Marianne It is a requirement today that the catalogues of codices and old books describe in short the preserved historic bindings of books. In the entries of the present catalogue in paragraph B short information is included on the binding of the printing in question. It is their manual illuminations, handwritten and marginal notes and historic bindings from the age of handicraft that make the old books unique. For almost four centuries it was the owners, i.e. the readers who have had their printed books bound. The original bindings preserved provide significant information on the exact place or at least the region where the book has been used, as well as on the provenience of the books in a given collection. About one tenth of the 1022 pieces of pre-1601 prints in the Metropolitan Szabó Ervin Library’s collection (MSZEL) have a historic binding. The rubbings of these bindings as well as their descriptions have been numbered chronologically. The essay analyses some outstanding Gothic (1, 10, 21, 25), Hungarian Renaissance (26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 50) and Italian Renaissance (38, 42) bindings. The majority of historic bindings in the collection belong to German Renaissance. A table at the end of the essay provides a full overview of the historic bindings in the MSZEL; the numbers in italics in the second column denote the sequence numbers of bindings. Old books are much more valuable if their original binding has been preserved. 735
