Adorned in silk: the use of fabric in the bindings of the old books stored in Wroblewski Library at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

Straipsnyje aptariamos Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių bibliotekos Retų spaudinių skyriuje saugomos knygos, kurių įrišams arba skirtukams naudoti audiniai, dažniausiai šilkas. Daugiausia tokių pavyzdžių rasta tarp liturginių ir kitų religinių knygų. Tarp pasaulietinio turinio knygų aptikti tik pavieniai audiniu įrišti egzemplioriai.The article discusses the cloth-bound and decorated books stored in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and expands on the use of textile depending on the content of the book and its purpose. The number of cloth-covered books is rather small. One of the reasons for this is that from the 16th century onward, with the advent of stronger gold-plated leather bindings, textile bindings experienced a decline in popularity; their use got restricted mainly to the special books and with additional decorations. Furthermore, clothbound books fray faster unless their corners have extra protection. It cannot be ruled out that some of such old bindings may have perished during various disasters while what reached us was re-bound books or books that had lost their bindings. The 19th century Catholic Church stand out as notable examples. A relatively large number of them survived to this day, particularly those dedicated to the Samogitian diocese. This can be explained by the fact that the calendars were only used for one year; therefore, simple fabric bindings were sufficient. The recurrent cloths used for the covers of rubricellae support the assumption that at least some of the calendars were sold for binding. Of the ornate books of secular content, the 1737 Horace’s works printed in London are worthy to be distinguished, with their inner covers covered with silk moiré. The exquisitely ornate Catholic missals and Orthodox Gospel books are covered with additionally decorated velvet: the corners are adorned with square or rounded details, with a biblical scene or an image of a saint featured at the centre. Such books usually have a metal clasp. Although no metal components of the Orthodox Gospel books stored in the funds of the Rare Books Department have survived, the possible scenes depicted in them can be deduced from other respective Gospel books – they would probably contain images of evangelists in the corners and the crucifixion at the centre. Catholic liturgical books are decorated with multiple-strand bookmarkers with ornate anchors covering their connecting knot. As the pages of the book had to be turned during the liturgy of the Mass, and the prayers were meant to be read from different places of the book, several bookmarkers marking the different places were required. For the sake of convenience, they were connected at the top. It is not possible to determine exactly where the tradition of decorating the connection point of the bookmarkers came from as such details of various shapes are known in both Catholic and Orthodox books; therefore, such method could have either come along with the missals or it could have been borrowed from the Orthodoxes living nearby. Two shapes of the bookmark anchors used in both missals and the Gradual have been discovered – flat rectangular ones, decorated with lace, embroidered or simply sewn from ornate fabric, as the ones shaped like an elongated tube, made from decorative twine, with a piece of firmly rolled-up thick paper placed at the centre. Missals have bookmarks unique exclusively to them – they are, glued to the side, made from various ribbons, usually silk, marking each page of the Eucharistic prayer. They were meant to help turn the pages easily, making sure that the priest saying the prayer is not distracted. Although not abundant, the collection of books with textile bindings stored in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences is very diverse. The examples discussed in the paper reveal the different options of using this material: luxury cloths are used for exclusive books with functional significance, simpler ones – for short-lived, practical publications