bladstycke

Bladstycke is a Swedish noun formed from blad (leaf, page) and stycke (piece, section). It denotes a unit consisting of a single leaf of a manuscript, book, or document. In librarianship, paleography, and bibliographic catalogs, bladstycke is used to describe the physical sheet, including its position in the binding and its relation to the surrounding leaves. A manuscript leaf, and thus a bladstycke, has two sides, commonly referred to as recto and verso, and catalog entries may specify its folio number or location within a gathering. The term emphasizes the physical object rather than the textual content and is therefore typical in archival and conservation contexts.

The usage of bladstycke is primarily historical or specialized. In everyday Swedish, sida is the ordinary term for a page, while blad is more often associated with a leaf or sheet in a botanical or decorative sense. As a technical term, bladstycke appears in descriptions of manuscripts, incunabula, and bound collections, where precise reference to a single leaf is important for dating, provenance, and conservation work.

While largely confined to academic and archival discourse, understanding bladstycke aids in interpreting catalog records, conservation reports, and scholarly editions that focus on the material aspects of textual artifacts. See also blad, sida, foliation, folio.