The website Limp Vellum shows off bindings from the British Library Catalog. These bindings were “offered at a cheaper price than the familiar full-leather options, and … were often created to serve a temporary purpose, designed to be easily replaced.” The introduction goes on to say:… a young book conservator helping to assess the damage done by the Florence flood to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in 1966, noted that limp vellum bindings, text blocks laced into folded vellum covers, had not only survived the flood with more success than traditional leather-over-boards structures, but that even before the disaster they seemed to have been better protecting their text blocks.
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