This week's focus is on a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible which has just been made available by Bayliss Rare Books.
"This is undoubtedly the rarest item I have encountered thus far," said Oliver Bayliss. "Only 49 complete bibles are known to exist and these are with museums and institutions. In the 1920s rare book dealer Gabriel Wells split an incomplete copy and sold the leaves of which there were 568. 466 have been found and this is one of those. The others are still wandering yet to surface.
"Alongside the leaves, Wells sold a book called a Noble Fragment which is rare in itself and we have the book alongside this. All the leaves from Wells' splitting the bible are called Noble Fragments. Currently only two others are available anywhere in the world. This is the finest example of those and indeed the finest to surface so far. Each collector who bought each of the 180 bibles printed by Gutenberg, illuminated them in whatever way they wanted, thus making each bible unique and each leaf unique."
