Siberian Old Believer bookbinding in the Funds of the TSU Scientific Library and Their Features (on the example of manuscripts from the Yurlov's and Babaev's collections)

The history of the Siberian Old Believers bookbinders stays, to the present day, almost unexplored; there are a number of reasons for this. One of them is the fragmentation of the material and the little attention that researchers devote to the structural features of the bookbinding when describing hand-written assemblies (collections). Therefore, it is very important to provide a bookbinding's detailed description of Old Believers' manuscripts located in state repositories. To date (nowadays), the collection of manuscripts of the National Library of TSU (Tomsk State University Research Library) has about 1000 units. Among them almost 800 Slavic-Russian. chronologically they cover the period from the end of the 12th century to the middle of XX century. The fact that the collections of the National Library of the TSU (Tomsk State University Research Library), including the collection of manuscripts, are being studied actively, is evidenced by a number of publications. Also, three issues of the catalog were published, in which a complete description of the collection of Slavic-Russian manuscripts of the National Library of TSU (Tomsk State University Research Library) was published. The descriptions contain only a brief summary of the bookbinding, which is not sufficient for the present study. Therefore, for a detailed study of the characteristics of the Siberian Old Believer bookbinding there were selected two collections from the National Library of the TSU (Tomsk State University Research Library): the Yurlov's and Babaev's collections. These collections were chosen for comparison, since the bookbinding of the manuscripts related to them are made of different materials (base: boards, cardboard, paper, coating: leather, paper, marble paper, canvas.) and in different techniques. For a detailed description of the bookbinding, a scheme was developed and applied to each of them. With the help of a detailed description, all the essential features have been marked out After a detailed study of each bookbinding, they were grouped according to chronology. In the detailed description of the bookbinding, the following features were revealed: In total, 21 bookbinding are presented in both collections. The most part (15) is a classic Old Russian bookbinding. The earliest bookbinding date back to the 18th century, when the ancient Russian bookbinding traditions were commonly used. Most of the bookbinding, belonging to the XIX century, are also made accordingly to the Old Russian traditions, but since the 50's. of XIX century there are bookbinding made of new, more accessible materials (cardboard, paper, canvas) in the collection of Babaev. It is noted that the bookbinding related to the same collection could be made of different materials and with varying degrees of skill. It can be assumed that there were both brought books, made in professional bookbinding workshops, and handicraft bindings made for their own needs on the spot among the examined manuscripts. Also, a structural feature was revealed during the description of bookbinding - a cut of leather under the belt; it does not appear regularly and does not depend on the time of manufacture. This is due to the fact that the bookbinding were made by different.

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