[OCTAGONAL SHAPED BOOK]. Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen auch Hymni und andere Chorgesäng. Nach Ordnung der Jarzeit zugericht. Nuremberg: Catharina Dieterich for Johann Lauer, 1601.

[OCTAGONAL SHAPED BOOK]. Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen auch Hymni und andere Chorgesäng. Nach Ordnung der Jarzeit zugericht. Nuremberg: Catharina Dieterich for Johann Lauer, 1601.

8o (84 x 63 mm). PRINTED AND BOUND IN OCTAGONAL SHAPE, woodcut title border colored in contemporary hand in gold and colors, with a full-page hand-colored woodcut illustration on verso in gold and colors, text printed in black, within a red octagonal border. Contemporary calf with central gilt floral design and within a single fillet around edges, spine with 2 raised bands (some minor wear). Provenance: purchased from Emil Offenbacher, 8 February 1963.

VERY RARE AND HIGHLY UNUSUAL BINDING AND PRINTING only a very few bindings in unorthodox shapes have been recorded, an unusually high number are in the Hauck collection. This is one of the very few books that is printed and bound in an octagonal shape. Other known octagonal bindings have the text mounted on octagonal cut paper, but are not printed octagonally. W.H. Blumenthal writes of octagonal books that they are "precious both in print and of age and in small proportions." (Bookmen's Bedlam p. 118). Blumethal knew of four such specimens, but only one of them is a printed book, the others are oriental manuscripts. The specimen described by Blumenthal seems to be one of a few known specimens of a printed book in octagonal shape. It is also described and illustrated in Leon Gruel's Manuel historique et bibliographique de l'Amateur de Reliures vol. II plate I. The volume consists of three German devotional texts of which only the first is complete, the others both lack the title and the last page. Sold not subject to return.