Glossary

The specific dialect used by bibliophiles is not always easy to understand for outsiders. Allthough Bouwman Oriental Books aims not to use such jargon, sometimes we can’t escape and the term is very usefull. The following list of words can be helpful in understanding the descriptions made for our books:

• Blind-ruling: Impression made by a ruling board on paper. The ruling board is made from wood and has ribbons bound on it. The paper is pressed on top of it and as a result the paper shows a blind-ruling. Blind ruling can also be created by writing with a dry pen.
• Blind-stamping/blind-tooled: Impression made in leather for decorative purposes. 
• Book-block: A book without it’s binding. Collection of quires bound together. 
• Catchwords: Final words from the previous quire repeated on the next quire., so that the binder knew the sequence of the quires. 
• Collation: Checking the leaves of a manuscript. All books at our stock have had such a collation, and are complete, if not stated otherwise. 
• Cropped: A book is described as cropped when the leaves do not have their original seizes. Most of the times the cropping of pages occurs when a book is rebound.
• End-paper: The paper that makes the transition from the last quire to the binding. The end-paper can consist of a single leaf, a double leaf around the book, forming a fly-leaf at the beginning or a double leaf creating a paste-down after the end-paper on the inner side of the binding.
• Fly-leaf: See End-paper, same but between binding and first quire of the book. Often fly-leaves and end-papers have fulfilled a function of protection for a manuscript. Besides this they function as extra writing space. Owners’ notes are among the most interesting.
• Foliation: counting of leaves not pages !
• Hinge: Inner joint of the binding and the book-block.
• Half-leather: The binding is partially covered with leather. At least the spine is covered with leather.
• Incipit: First words at the beginning of the text.
• Line-filler: Character that is strechted to fill up the left over space.
• Marocco: Type of leather, mostly goat skin. Known for it’s good quality and therefor often used for book-bindings.
• Parchment: Part of the hide that is processed ed in order to create a writing surface. The hide is cleaned from it’s hair and flesh, washed, treated stretched and dried. Difference with leather is that the former is given an looizuur-bath, which gives leather it’s souplesse.
• Paste-down: Page pasted down on the inner side of a binding.
• Prickings: Little wholes who served the ruling of a page.
• Probatio pennae: Trial of the pen and ink. For example after reshaping the pen.
• Quire: Collection of folded leaves.
• Re-backed: Given new spine and mended hinges.
• Recto: When a book is open, the page that lets you read the most far. (Difference between Arabic/Hebrew texts and Latin texts!)
• Rubrication: The writing in a different color ink than the main text.
• Size: Originally the seize was named after the part it was from a hide. Quarto meant that the size of the parchment page formed a quarter of the original skin. This way the leaf of a quarto page was twice as large, and only half of the original skin or paper. Allthough, except for some pieces, original skins and paper are not divided any more this way to create leaves, these names are associated with the following measures:
  • Quarto: 10 inch / 25.4 cm  - 12 inch / 30.48 cm
  • Octavo: 8 inch / 20.32 cm  - 10 inch / 25.4 cm
  • Duodecimo: 6 inch /15.24 cm  -  7 inch / 17.78 cm
    
• Spine: Back of a book-block.
• Ties: Ribbons to close a book.
• Vellum: Thin kind of parchment. Mostly taken from young animals that died. Extremely fine quality to write on.
• Verso: First page you read on of an open book.
• Washed paper: Paper that has been given a color bath.
• Waterstain: Discoloration of writing material (paper) as a result of water.