In Front | “Noble Fragments” of Gutenberg Bibles

Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2020. 

There may not appear to be anything “noble” about taking a Bible apart, but the practice of unbinding incomplete texts and selling them to collectors one page, or series of pages, at a time was once common. 

One of the better-known examples of this took place in 1921, when about a third of a Gutenberg Bible, more than 200 pages, was broken down and repackaged by a New York book dealer named Gabriel Wells. Each page was given its own leather binding with an introductory essay, and these volumes were given the title, “A Noble Fragment Being A Leaf of the Gutenberg Bible 1450-1455.” The opening lines of the essay:

Reader: pause a while. For you look—and it may be for the first time—upon an actual page of a Gutenberg Bible, the most precious piece of printing in the world; and, admittedly, the earliest. Truly a noble fragment!

However controversial the practice of taking apart these Bibles may be, there’s no denying the quality or importance of the text, or that seeing one of these pages in person has been throughout history a rare privilege. The quality of the printing, even half a millennium later, is exceptional. 

Beyond the use of movable type, Gutenberg also developed a new kind of ink for his Bible, which was “not really ink at all, (but) more like a varnish or oil paint.” This printer’s ink was handmade in batches and “is distinctive in having a glittering surface,” due to “its high level of metal content, in particular copper, lead and titanium.” The paper and vellum used were also of the highest quality. In front of you are two of Wells’ “Noble Fragments” and another selection from a Gutenberg Bible, of Paul’s letter to the Romans in its entirety, from another incomplete surviving volume. 

Sources: 

• http://www.mccunecollection.org/Incunabula%20Leaf%20Biblia%20Latina.html; 
• http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/ink.html; 
• http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/paper.html;

John Carter and Nicolas Barker, ABC for Book Collectors, 2002, p. 140; A. Edward Newton, A Noble Fragment Being a Leaf of the Gutenberg Bible, 1921, p. 1.

Link to downloadable PDF: https://www.ilab.org/eng/documentation/30-john_carters_abc_for_book_collectors.html

Accessed Nov 18, 2020.