Turducken Books

For centuries, an older manuscript sheathed a 1480 edition of the Vulgate.
COURTESY NEWBERRY LIBRARY

For centuries, bookbinders used whatever materials they could get—including entire manuscript pages from even older books.

Suzanne Karr Schmidt, a curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Newberry Library in Chicago, jokingly describes these as “turducken books”—a book (or manuscript) within a book within a book. Repurposed scraps like these show up in several dozen places in the library’s collection, either as bindings, mends, or pieces used to reinforce spines.

Read more: Atlas Obscura