This is the Cuthbert Gospel, the personal copy of St. John’s Gospel owned by St. Cuthbert, a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon monk. This manuscript is significant because it is the oldest Western book with its original cover still intact. Covers, naturally, are the part of a book that suffers the most abuse, as is their role; so they tend to be the first part to be destroyed and replaced. The Cuthbert Gospel’s cover only managed to survive because it was buried with its owner and sat in a tomb for centuries.

This makes the Cuthbert Gospel, methodologically speaking, the starting point for the history of Western cover art (as well, it so happens, of Insular leatherwork). The cover is red goatskin; multiple colors are used for the engraved Celtic knots and the image in the center of a vine sprouting from a chalice.