Folio

Giovanni Ciotti

We could define a folio as a flat, relatively light and thin piece of material (vs Tablet) that can be shaped in almost any form, but mostly as a square or a rectangle. It can be made of a sheet of paper, parchment or bark, a leaf of a palm tree, a plate of metal, etc., which are variously worked so as to support writing. Folios are portable, i.e. sufficiently light to be held in hand, archived or simply moved. We formally distinguish folios from letters, since the latter are meant to be sent and are often encased in some sort of envelope, however the distinction is far from being neatly cut. Furthermore, folios are different from scraps or pieces of any random yet equally flat, light and thin material that can also be used to host writing.

As it can be easily expected, terminology varies across traditions. For example, what would fall in this context within the definition of folio, i.e. the wooden tilia typical of the Roman northwestern provinces, can be referred to as ‘ink tablet’ or ‘leaf tablet’ (Willi 2021, 45).

Folios are among the building blocks of more complex written artefacts. On the one hand, scrolls/rolls and concertinas can be described as made of a relatively long single folio produced with one or many sheets of a given material (paper, parchment, bark). On the other hand, books, codices and some pothis can contain several folios each that may be folded and variously bound together.

Due to their simplicity, folios are prone to at least two basic forms of manipulations, i.e. folding or stacking, both of which have virtually taken place anywhere folios have been available. The result of such relatively simple activities are however labelled differently, according to their specific cultural context and the academic conventions of the discipline that is scrutinising them.

In this respect, one may think of the labels ‘diptych’ or ‘bifolio’, both used to indicate a folded folio. The former is used for example to indicate Roman wooden folios (see Willi 2021, 45), but can also be used to refer to two distinct folios or tablets bound together (e.g. wooden tablets from Ancient Near East or Classical Antiquity, which we would here categorise as books; see Cammarosano et al 2019: 146–153). On the other hand, a folded parchment or paper folio that is used in a codex is called ‘bifolio’ (Muzerelle 2002–2003, s.v. bifeuillet).

Stacks of loose folios can in certain contexts indicate well-defined handwritten artefacts. (Note that in this context we have in mind stacks that are intentionally kept together with no internal binding – sewing or glueing –, but can be wrapped up in cloth or leather, or encased in a case or box.) In particular, one can think of albums, such as a few unbound alba amicorum (viz. Stammbücher), written artefacts prominently in use in Europe from the sixteenth century (Droese and Karolewski 2024), or the collections of narrative paintings in use in Nepal from the seventeenth century (Pal 1978, 95–96, figs. 153, 167).

Furthermore, in certain given cultures, stacking loose folios is the paradigmatic way of building manuscripts. For example, Bondarev and Löhr (2014, 66) write: “Many West African manuscripts were kept unbound as loose folios in a tooled leather casing made of goat skin, which is not attached to the text block but rather wrapped around it.” Note that such loose folios were in origin often bifolia (Bondarev 2023). A similar case is represented by unstrung pothis, i.e. stacks of oblong folios usually made of paper at times placed between two covers (mostly made of wood) and possibly wrapped with textile (Ciotti 2023).