From the reliure mobile to the Schraubband. Collecting and storing prints in adjustable albums at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin

Abstract

A large section of the print holdings of the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin is housed in bulky albums known as Schraubbände (‘screw volumes’). From the outside, these albums are similar to print albums that abounded in private collections before the nineteenth century. But their leaves are not sewn together as in a traditional codex structure; rather, they are screwed together between metal rods. The rods can be unscrewed for easy insertion and removal of the mounted prints, while keeping them in the given order. By investigating material and historical aspects of the Berlin Schraubbände, this paper identifies their forerunners in the reliure mobile-albums in use at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, proposes a rationale behind their use at the Kupferstichkabinett in the late nineteenth century, and challenges the traditional discrimination between bound and unbound print collections.