Somewhat less portable than today’s mobile information devices, a rare French gothic coffer dating to the late 1400s that was used to transport books has been acquired by Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries.
The book box, the first of its kind to enter the libraries’ collection of medieval manuscripts, is made of wood covered with leather, with a metal lock and fittings as well as leather straps threaded on to the sides for carrying. Inside the lid, a woodcut of “God the Father in Majesty” is attached, derived from a liturgical book printed in Paris in 1491 and pointing to the coffer’s place and date of origin. The Bodleian said the print would have been intended to provide “spiritual protection to whatever mixture of books, money, documents, and even medicines the coffer may at different times have contained”.
“The coffer is a remarkable item that is both utilitarian and devotional and preserves an exceptionally rare woodcut in its original context,” said Dr Christopher Fletcher, keeper of special collections. “Among other things, it shows us that our preoccupation with carrying information around with us in mobile devices – including texts and images – is nothing new.”
It is not known what texts the coffer would have contained. The Bodleian suggested it could have held an illuminated Book of Hours alongside other Christian devotional books. Whatever it held would have been protected by a red canvas lining that has survived mostly intact.
According to the Bodleian, although there are thousands of surviving medieval manuscripts and printed books, only around 100 book coffers are known to be in existence, the majority of which date to the 1500s. Only four impressions of the woodcut in this coffer’s lid, which dates from the earliest days of European printing, are currently known to survive. The woodcut also features a Latin prayer – a chant for the Feast of the Trinity beginning: “Te inuocamus, te laudamus, te benedicimus …”
Cristina Dondi, professor of early European book heritage at Oxford, said: “Very few original woodblock prints from this period survive and each is rich in meaning, complex and exceedingly rare. So, to be able to study one still attached to a physical object of this nature is truly exceptional. This coffer dates to a time when devotional materials were at the crossing between the medieval and the modern period, between art made by hand and by mechanical means.”
The coffer, which is part of a new display at the Bodleian’s Weston Library, was acquired from a private dealer who had bought it at auction in 2007. The Weston exhibition, entitled Thinking Inside the Box, features a selection of boxes and bags that have been used to carry books through the centuries, from specially designed satchels for Qur’anic manuscripts to a palm-leaf manuscript from West Java kept inside a carved, lacquered and painted box.
