Over time, the standard codex form has undergone mutations, and variations have developed based upon region, genre, or individual taste. Even when combined with forms of other traditions, which happens occasionally, some kind of referral to its main characteristics has remained. As is the case with all traditions, the form has been, and still is, consciously played with by artists.

Ben Denzer ’15 is the proprietor of Catalog Press, a small publisher known for inventive takes on the traditional codex. Denzer has created limited edition books from slices of cheese, napkins, and dollar bills. Here 15 commercially produced paperbacks transform into a single handmade volume, which is Slinky-like with its flexible spine.

Graphic Arts N-003696

For further reading

Bourton, Lucy. “Catalog Press is questioning what a book can be (and maybe it’s made of cheese).” It’s Nice That (August 19, 2019). Accessed May 20, 2025. https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/ben-denzer-catalog-press-publication-190819

Paper, cloth, or wooden amulets called hatumere are created by religious healers throughout West Africa. Princeton has a collection containing over 100 such amulets, with pages of prayers and verses from the Qurʾān, some other texts in a special coded language used to invoke spirits (such as here), colored diagrams, and/or magic squares comprised of mystical letters, names, and representations of holy places. Princeton’s collection is held together in the loose 19th-century tan leather codex binding seen here.

Islamic Manuscripts, Third Series no. 708

For further reading

Prussin, Labelle. Hatumere: Islamic design in West Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

This Qur’ān was captured from the Sultan of Taraca, Mindanao during the early 20th-century American colonial anti-Moro campaign in the Philippines. It forms part of a small regional group of Qur’āns that use loose wooden covers joined with twine to wrap around the unbound manuscript. The paper, too, is locally produced from bamboo shoots. Special too is the textual combination of two usually distinct Qur’ānic textual traditions, and the presence of short passages in the Maranao language.

Gift of Robert Garrett, Class of 1897, 1942

Garrett no. 28G

For further reading

Gallop, Annabel Teh. “Qur’an manuscripts from Mindanao: collecting, histories, art and materiality.” South East Asia Research (April 1, 2021). Accessed May 20, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/0967828X.2021.1895674

Kawashima Midori. “Comments on non-Arabic texts found in the Qur’an manuscript from Taraka, Garrett 28G, Princeton University Library.” Unpublished manuscript, February 11, 2023, corrected June 19, 2024.

From the 16th century onwards the Jesuits formed links with some members of China’s ruling class, producing works in Classical Chinese. In 1615 they obtained papal approval to use the Missale Romanum in Chinese, not Latin. Ludovico Buglio took 24 years to make his translation, finally published in 1670–76. The book itself, appropriately, is a hybrid of a codex (the outer binding), and the common Chinese book form (inside).

Bequest of William H. Scheide ’36, 2015

Scheide 46.1

For further reading

Seah, Audrey. “The 1670 Chinese missal: a struggle for indigenization amidst the Chinese rites controversy.” In China's Christianity: from missionary to indigenous church, edited by Anthony E. Clark, 86-120. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

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