BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Bible Collection

DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Bible Collection:

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Description of Pictures: They set up new cases for the bibles.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LOCBIB_180925_05.JPG: The Gutenberg Bible Coming Soon The Library has temporarily removed the Gutenberg Bible as part of an exciting project to build a new and enhanced display that will provide state of the art preservation technology. On display is a facsimile of the Bible. The original is scheduled to be reinstalled late fall, 2018.
2. LOCBIB_181227_30.JPG: The Gutenberg Bible When Johann Gutenberg (ca 1400-1468) introduced printing with moveable metal type to Western Europe, he revolutionized not only the book, but the very nature of communication. Gutenberg launched this revolution in 1455 in Mainz, Germany, with the printing of the Biblia Sacra, St. Jerome's fourth-century Latin Vulgate Bible. Text, once scared and complicated to produce, was now easily created in multiples that were readily distributed. Our of this explosion of words emerged the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. Gutenberg's printed words mimicked the formal book hand used by scribes. His Bible resembled a large, gothic Bible of the period. Of the approximately 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible printed, less than fifty survive today and only twenty-one are complete. To produce 180 copies the 1,282-page Bible required 230,760 passes through the press -- nearly two years of work. The average scribe, on the other hand, could complete only one entire Bible in three years. Most copies were printed on paper, but the Library of Congress copy is printed on vellum, a fine parchment made from animal skins. The Library's copy is one of only several perfect vellum copies to survive. For nearly five centuries the Bible was in the possession of the Benedictine Order in their monasteries of St. Blasius and St. Paul in Austria. Along with other fifteenth-century books, it was purchased from Dr. Otta Vollbehr by act of Congress in 1930.
3. LOCBIB_181227_39.JPG: In celebration of the Bible as a text and as an object of devotion, it has often been decorated and elaborated in a way that distinguishes it from all other books. From glorious medieval illuminations to exquisite printed illustrations to grand, stately printings of the modern period, the Bible has always been a canvas for expressions of monumental faith and inspiration. Numerous fine presses -- traditional as well as contemporary -- have turned to the Bible for its texts to produce various testaments, complete Bibles, and letterpress books, illustrating them with woodcuts and engravings. All items shown here [are] from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
4. LOCBIB_181227_48.JPG: The Book of Ruth. San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1926
5. LOCBIB_181227_53.JPG: Book of Jonah, 1979
6. LOCBIB_181227_61.JPG: The Apocalypse: The Revelation of Saint John the Divine... with Twenty-nine Prints from Woodblocks Cut by Jim Dine. San Francisco: Arion Press, 1982
7. LOCBIB_181227_67.JPG: David Annwn. The Saint John's Fragment: Against the Odds.. Poem by David Annwn; Calligraphy by Thomas Ignmire. Santa Cruz: Foolscap Press, 2015
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Description of Subject Matter: Library of Congress Bible Collection
Ongoing exhibition, opened April 11, 2008.
In the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, two monumental Bibles face each other as if in dialogue: one, the Giant Bible of Mainz, signifies the end of the handwritten book—and the other, the Gutenberg Bible, marks the beginning of the printed book and the explosion of knowledge and creativity it would engender. This exhibition explores the significance of the two Bibles, and, through an interactive presentation, the relationship between the Mainz Bible, the Gutenberg Bible, and sixteen selected Bibles from the Library’s collections.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages here that have content directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]
- 2015_DC_LOC_Bibles: DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Bible Collection (11 photos from 2015)
- 2014_DC_LOC_Bibles: DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Bible Collection (5 photos from 2014)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Libraries] [Library of Congress (Everything)] [Library of Congress (Non-Events)]
2018 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences in Greenville, NC, Newport News, VA, and my farewell event with them in Chicago, IL (via sites in Louisville, KY, St. Louis, MO, and Toledo, OH), three trips to New York City (including New York Comic-Con), and my 13th consecutive trip to San Diego Comic-Con (including sites in Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles). Number of photos taken this year: about 535,000.
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].