This, I think, expands one's horizons, but it is also the kind of collecting a lot of people do not understand, because most collectors do not collect the book as an object or the book as an example of the intellectual time within which it was created. Books, if you think about it, remain the most constant objects of civilized thought and practical experience, that we deal with. By that I mean that the printers of the fifteenth century could come into this room, could look at books printed today, and would immediately recognize these objects as books. They would understand the technology and typography and all the problems of book design. The practical problems of book design were really solved by the sixteenth century.
People always talk about books imitating manuscripts.
That is nonsense, as I think has been demonstrated. Books imitated manuscripts for perhaps a decade. But the manuscript was really a unique creation. A manuscript was commissioned by, written by, and executed by one human being and every manuscript is unique to itself. You can go to the Library of Congress and see the exemplar of the Gutenberg Bible in manuscript form.