Flaps, Volvelles, and Vellum in Pre-Modern Movable Manuscript and Print

Abstract

Manuscripts, printed books, and stand-alone prints or broadsides with relief and intaglio illustrations are known with movable parts from throughout the history of printing, with even earlier manuscripts dating back to the twelfth century. This article seizes the opportunity of recently-digitized materials to offer a preliminary visual analysis of the ways some of the earliest medieval and early modern printers and designers conceptualized, printed, and secured these flaps and dials to contain the greatest amount of possible knowledge and to offer the greatest ease of access. Practitioners and publishers who experimented creatively with these formats include Lambert of Saint-Omer, Matthew Paris, Johannes Regiomontanus, and Georg Phillip Harsdörffer. Evidence of the popularity and frequent use of their movable books survives in the form of vellum and paper engineered components, manuscript copies, uncut sheets of components, and in the constructed books themselves.