Souffleur, what is the meaning of 'Incunabel'?

Alison Souffreau, collection registration project assistant: "An incunabulum is a book set with loose letters and printed before January 1, 1501, in other words, before the sixteenth century. So these are works from the infancy of printing, which had been invented half a century earlier. Incunabula are also called cradle prints, but actually the word is derived from Latin for the wrappings in which newborn babies were wrapped. In fact, you should say "nappy printing” (laughs). Other than incunabula, there are also post-incunabula: these were printed a little later, between 1501 and 1540."

"The design of incunabula is often very reminiscent of the manuscripts that preceded them. For example, a lot was added by hand: capitals were coloured in by hand, the illustrations were woodcuts... Incunabula were also not yet paginated and did not have a title page - that all came later."

M owns just one incunabulum. It concerns a copy of 'De Civitate Dei' by the Church Father Augustine, which was printed in Leuven in 1488. The printer was Joannes de Westfalia Paderbornensis, so a man from the German region of Westphalia, but he worked in our town for a long time."

"Incunabula and other old prints are very valuable and so they are kept in optimal conditions in the museum depot, but the intention is not to keep them hidden from curious eyes. Since May of this year, M has therefore been working with the non-profit Flanders Heritage Library on the Boek/Delen project. The intention is to photograph, digitise and register 500 of our old prints on STCV, an online catalogue of all books printed by hand in Flanders before 1801. These 500 will soon be permanently accessible to researchers, but also to the general public. Exactly how is yet to be seen. At the moment, we are still in the process of researching the works, and in part already registering them."