These books are here for their beauty and visual impact, so you don't really need anything else! But if you want a little more info, here you go.
The fabric-covered medieval Book of Hours is new enough to UGA that we're still learning things about it. It was made in France in the first half of the fifteenth century, perhaps in the area of Anjou. It's got some delightful decoration in it, especially in the calendar. Its fabric cover is a post-medieval addition; it is perhaps seventeenth century, and Dr. Mattison can tell you more about our working hypotheses. Medieval books of hours frequently had fabric covers instead of the leather that we might expect, but of course fabric isn't as long-lasting a material, so fewer of these remain today. This one is a lovely case of perpetuating that practice, almost certainly by an "everyday" woman rather than a professional bookbinder.
The bedazzled blue-covered book is wild. It's a mid-nineteenth-century French book, but other than that we know nothing about it; it contains no publication information that I can find (if you find it looking through it, let us know.) Its pages are remarkably heavy. Their slick feel is the result of a process called "claying," which makes them unusually smooth -- but also prone to sticking together if they get wet. It is possible that this book was designed, as many medieval Books of Hours were, as a piece of a bride's trousseau (the nineteenth-century French term was corbeilles de mariage). Brightly colored, fabric-covered prayerbooks are listed in some bridal courbeilles alongside other exotic, high-status objects (Hiner 53). This book certainly codes "flashy status symbol"; might it have been bought for a young woman's trousseau?
The twenty-first century artist's book was created by Peter Malutzki, a German printmaker and book artist. As you can read on his webpage about this book (https://www.peter-malutzki.de/en-gb/stundenbuch), it was inspired by a particular early sixteenth-century de luxe Book of Hours and Malutzki's own desire to produce a "non-nostalgic" book inspired by these beautiful, ancient objects. I have yet to track down a digitization of the book that inspired Malutzki, but if you want to look at a Book of Hours from a similar timeperiod (also, as it happens, in a fabric cover), check out https://bibliophilly.library.upenn.edu/viewer.php?id=Lehigh%20Codex%2018#page/1/mode/2up
References
Hiner, Susan. Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Peter Malutzki. 14 May, 2024. https://www.peter-malutzki.de/en-gb/home