The collections of the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences include a set of printed textes by Jan Seklucjan with a handwritten dedication to Albrecht Frederick, Duke of Prussia (†1618). Their binding is decorated with plaquettes with portraits of Albrecht von Brandenburg- Ansbach, Duke of Prussia (†1568) and his first wife Dorothea (†1547). The article analyses both compositions, providing the following conclusions: they were made in the Konigsberg circles of the so-called Formschneider between the end of the 1530s and the first half of the 1540s. Between the period in question and 1565, wooden plaquettes (blocks) with these portraits were kept by the Duke’s court bookbinder, Kaspar Angler. After his death they probably belonged to the workshop equipment of his pupil Wolff Artzt, although it is also possible that they were used by a local religious writer, bookseller and possibly also bookbinder – Jan Seklucjan. Both works are examples of adaptation in Konigsberg of a specific formula of Renaissance book binding decoration, being at the same time a bookplate, based on a rectangular portrait plaquette presented in the centre of the cover. Compositions of such works most often depended on the painted portraits – mainly from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Both Konigsberg portraits, however, are marked by prolonged proportions, a landscape background, and the display of coats of arms at the bottom. This fact should be explained by the painting models that were probably related to paintings in Albrecht’s Konigsberg residence. It is impossible to decide definitely whether they were made by a painter employed at his court (e.g. Crispin Herrant), or imported. Nevertheless, they are an indirect testimony to the existence of a gallery of portraits in the Konigsberg Castle, which was created on a long-term basis and with passion by the Duke of Prussia.
The collections of the Kórnik Library include a copy of a printed Mszał gnieźnieński [Gniezno Missal] of 1555, protected by a binding with characteristic architectural decoration. Detailed analysis shows that the binding was made between 1558 and 1566 in a workshop of an anonymous bookbinder from Poznań, thus confirming the presence of the Italian thread in the Poznań bookbinding ornamentation of the Renaissance period. At the same time, it is the latest known example of Polish renaissance architectural binding. It also provides evidence that although this characteristic composition formula appeared in the repertoire of the Poznań bookbinders about twenty years later than in Kraków, it lasted longer.
Worthy of attention is also the volume’s provenance related to Stanisław Warszewicki – his being “the most influential figure of the [Jesuit] Order after Skarga” in Poland. He is commemorated by a supralibros with Kuszaba coat-of-arms and the sigles “S V C P” pressed into the centre of the bottom part of the binding.