Incunabula Maurits Sabbe Library
Pamphlet about a "monstrous child" born on the Rhine. Printed in Basel by Johann Bergmann, 1500.
When the Maurits Sabbe Library was established, it integrated and brought together several existing collections from other libraries. Some of these included manuscripts, incunabula and other old and rare books. Many of the 700 incunabula held in the Maurits Sabbe Library belong to the collections of the library of the Northern Belgian province of the Jesuit order and the library of the archiepiscopal seminary of Mechlin.
Like those in Special Collections, the incunabula of the Maurits Sabbe Library cover a wide variety of topics and fields of study. Theological works make up the bulk of the collection, but history, linguistics, metaphysics and even agriculture are covered as well. Some of the incunabula, like the pamphlet on the left, are only a few pages long; others span hundreds of folios.
With this link, you get access to all digitized incunabula.
Decorations, painted and printed
The page layouts of early printed works often strongly resemble those of handwritten manuscripts, including elaborate ornamental initials. These initials could be added using several methods. In some cases, space was left in the printed text. The initial was then drawn by hand after the printing process was completed. The correct letter could be printed in the empty area in the same size as the rest of the text, as a guide for the person painting the initial. The book to the left is an example of this practice.
Another strategy is to print the decorative initials using woodcuts. That is the case in the work to the bottom right.
Hand-painted ornamental initial in Sermones quadragesimales de legibus dicti by Leonardus de Utino, 1479
Printed ornamental initials with nature motifs in Logica by Georgio Valla and others, 1496. The book also includes woodcut diagrams.
Illustrations can be printed or painted as well. Woodcut diagrams could be used to clarify scientific works, when necessary. Images could depict scenes from the story, or be used purely as decoration, just like in modern books. These illustrations were usually carefully planned beforehand, but it's clear that even five centuries ago, people were sometimes of the opinion that a book didn't have enough pictures. And in those cases one has to take matters (or a pen) into their own hands*.
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Liber chronicarum, 1493. Woodcut by Wilhelm Pleydenwurff.
Sketch in ink on the left flyleaf in a 1483 book printed by Georg Husner in Strasbourg.
Woodcut spanning multiple pages of the port city Candia, now Heraklion, Crete. In Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, a 1490 travelogue by Bernhard von Breydenbach.
* Please refrain from actually writing or drawing in library books.