A miracle of printing and of preservation. This volume held the record for the smallest book ever printed for over 200 years; it is the ne plus ultra of miniature book collecting.

“Benedikt Smidt was a printer from Middelburg who moved to Amsterdam in 1673, at the age of 23. He probably produced this mini-miniature as a show-piece to demonstrate his technical ability. The text was printed in double spreads on one side of the paper, then cut and pasted together to give the appearance of normal leaves. The book was not sewn but pasted into the binding. Very few copies are known. A collector describes her own rebound copy in ‘News-letter of the 64mos’ 21 (1929), adding: ‘aside from the copy…in the G. Salomon collection in Paris [i.e. the Houghton copy], I have heard only of one other copy, reported to have been sold in Germany about 1900.’” (Houghton). The present copy is in a binding identical to that of the Houghton copy and to the one illustrated in the Horodisch article. Sotheby’s sold the Walcott-Soliday copy, in vellum, in 1990.

References: Bondy pg.20 (illus.); Welsh 1306; Miniature Book Collector Vol.1, No.1, pg.5-6; Newsletters of the 64mos IX:5, XX:4, XII:7 (illus.), XXI:2 (illus.); Horodisch, Ueber Buecher Kleinsten Formats, in Aus dem Antiquariat, Feb 1978; The History of Miniature Books pg.31,35,56,105; Christie's, Houghton Collection of Miniature Books, 1979 #160 (illus. plate 9).