The Gutenberg Bible is the first large-format printed book in the history of humankind, which signifies the adoption of a new technology and symbolises the start of a new era. 

The book’s ornamentation is hand-drafted and based on the manuscript codices designs. Although there was an attempt to print the rubrics in red, after a few leafs, this idea was abandoned, and the rubricator used a quill pen to apply the rest of the red colour manually. This is likely due to the fact that double printing took too much time. The Bible is decorated with 126 large red and blue initials placed at the beginning of each book against the gold scale backdrop and multicolour bear’s-breech leaf and flower borders. The 1316 middle-sized initials mark the beginning of each chapter and are made of gold scale and gold paint and placed against an ornamented red or blue backdrop. The text also includes some smaller red and blue initials.

Its 282 miniatures, i.e., illustrations to the text, located along the bottom margins, and multi-colour, gold paint borders, are also unique; some of them were executed in the French mid-15th century style, possibly by Peter Schöffer.

180 books were printed, with 140 of them on paper and the others on vellum. Today, there are 49 copies, but not all of them are complete. The Bible from the Russian State Library collection is one of the four fully preserved vellum copies.