English and other national binders--Anonymous bindings--List of
binders--The Scotish School--Mr. Quaritch out-bidden--The vellum
copy of Boece's _Chronicles of Scotland_--Most familiar names in
England--Embroidered bindings ascribed to the Nuns of Little
Gidding--Provincial binders--Edwards of Halifax--Fashion of
edge-painting--Amateur binding--Forwarding and finishing--A
Baronet-binder--French liveries for English books--Bedford's
French style--Incongruity of the Parisian _gout_ with our
literature--List of French binders--Ancient stamped leather
bindings of Italy, Flanders, and Germany copied in
France--Ludovicus Bloc of Bruges--Judocus de Lede--Rarity of
early signed examples in France--Andre Boule (1508)--Enhancement
of the estimation of old books in France by special bindings--The
New Collector counselled and admonished--What he is to do, and
where he is to go.
THE English School of Binding brings before us a roll of names borne
by artists of successive periods and of varying merit, from the last
quarter of the fifteenth century to the present time. That it is by no
means exhaustive is due to the circumstance that in the case of many
of the older, and some of the more recent, masters, there is no clue
to the origin in the shape of an external inscription on the cover, as
we find on foreign works, or in that of a ticket or a signature. As it
so frequently happens with old pictures, the style of a binder was
often, indeed generally, imitated by his pupils or successors, and we
are apt to mistake the original productions for the copies, unless we
engage in a very close study of minute details.
In the English, Scotish, and Irish series it is equally true that the
preponderance of bindings are unidentified. The monastic liveries, in
which so many venerable tomes have come down to us, were executed
within the walls of the buildings which held the books, and had
perhaps produced them; and analogously most of our early printers were
binders of their own stocks, as well as of any other works brought to
them. We may incidentally remind the reader that one practice on their
part was to utilise waste as end-papers or pasteboard, and to that
circumstance we are indebted for the recovery of numerous
typographical fragments belonging to publications not otherwise known.
That Pynson, Julian Notary, John Reynes, and others executed
book-binding outside their own productions seems to be proved by the
existence of much early literature of foreign origin with English
end-papers and covers. In fact, till the Stationers' Company made the
sale of books or printed matter a separate industry, the typographer
was his own binder and vendor.
The bibliopegist, as an independent artificer whom we are able to
identify, dates from the seventeenth century. We have already
mentioned Francis Rea or Read of Worcester as flourishing in 1660.
John Evelyn seems to have employed some one who executed good work in
morocco, and in better taste than that done for royalty at the same
period; yet we cannot be sure that he did not carry the books abroad
for the purpose. Pepys had in his service a binder named Richardson,
whom he mentions in the _Diary_, and who is otherwise known. A copy of
Stow's _Survey_, 1633, passed through his hands; it is in the original
calf; and he was merely engaged to repair it, as appears from a
memorandum inside the cover.
Of authentic names of later English binders, considering the
incalculable amount of work done, the number is extremely limited. If
we tabulate, we find only:--
Samuel Mearne.
# Bookbinder to Charles II.
Elliot & Chapman.
# The Harleian binders.
Robert Black.
# About 1760.
Edwards of Halifax.
Richard and Mrs. Wier.
Roger Payne.
Roger Payne and R. Wier.
Baumgarten.
Staggemeier.
# The binder of the Psalter
of 1459, formerly in the
Sykes collection, and
bought by Quaritch at the
Perkins sale for L4900.
Charles Hering.
Benedict.
H. Walther.
Fargher & Lindner.
H. Faulkner.
C. Kalthoeber.
Charles Lewis the Younger.
Charles the Younger.
J. Mackenzie.
C. Murton.
Charles Smith.
F. & T. Aitken.
Wickwar.
J. Wright.
Hayday.
Hayday & Co.
J. Clarke.
Clarke & Bedford.
Francis Bedford.
Roger De Coverly.
Grieve.
Henderson & Bissett.
McLehose of Glasgow.
Holloway.
Robert Riviere.
# The business is carried on by grandsons.
Zaehnsdorf.
Cobden Sanderson.
R. Montague (1730-40).
This represents not only the entire assemblage and succession, so far
as England is concerned, but covers Scotland and Ireland; and several
of the names are obviously those of foreigners. The Scotish artists,
if, as there is no absolute reason to doubt, a large number of early
books were clothed on the spot, possessed much taste and originality,
and some of them have descended to us in a pristine state of
preservation with the lavish gilding as fresh and brilliant as when
they left the workshop. We may fairly consider, looking at the
intimate relationship between Scotland and France in former times,
that a certain proportion of volumes of Scotish origin were bound
abroad, just as Americans at present send over their books to England.
Coming down to more recent days, the two names chiefly associated with
Scotland are C. Murton and J. Mackenzie, neither of whom attained
special celebrity.
But it is to be more than suspected that all important work in this
direction was long executed out of Scotland--either in London or in
Paris. The time came, however, when the Scots acquired a school and
style of their own, and all that can be pleaded for it is, that it is
manneristic and peculiar. Of recent years heavy prices have been paid
for first-class examples, which are of unusual rarity. Messrs. Kerr &
Richardson, of Glasgow, bought over Mr. Quaritch at the Laing sale in
London at a preposterous figure (L295) a copy of one of Sir George
Mackenzie's legal works simply for the covers; it was offered by the
purchasers afterward to the underbidder, who quietly informed them
that he had come to his senses again.
There is no reason why the magnificent copy on vellum of Boece's
_Chronicles of Scotland_ (1536), which occurred at the Hamilton sale
in 1884, should not have received its clothing of oaken boards covered
with gilt calf at home.
The most familiar names to English ears are perhaps those of Roger
Payne, Charles Hering, C. Kalthoeber, Charles Lewis, Francis Bedford,
Robert Riviere, and Zaehnsdorf. The genuine Roger Paynes in good state
are very scarce and equally desirable. Hering excelled in russia and
half-binding. Lewis bound with equal excellence in brown calf and
Venetian morocco, and was largely employed by Heber. Bedford had two
or three periods, of which the last was, on the whole, the best; he
was famous for his brown calf, but made it too dark at first, instead
of allowing it to deepen in colour with time. Riviere could do good
work when he took pains; but he was unequal and uncertain.
Charles Lewis had been preceded by another person of his name, who is
noticed in Nichols's _Anecdotes_ (iii. 465) as dying in 1783, and as
of Chelsea. This personage was held in high esteem by his clients, and
was very intimate with Smollett the novelist, who is said to have had
Lewis in his mind, when he drew the character of Strap in _Roderick
Random_.
Fashions in binding, which occupy a distinct position, are the
embroidered covers in gold, silver, and variegated threads, executed
both abroad and in England, and of which many examples are ascribed to
the Nuns of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire; and velvet, silk, and
metal bindings, which exist in sufficient abundance, and usually occur
with marks of original ownership, lending to them a special value.
Much depends in all these instances on the character of the work and
the preservation of the copy; and each book has to be judged on its
own merits. A considerable proportion of indifferent specimens are
constantly in the market.
The Little Gidding bindings are made additionally interesting by the
apparent connection between them and John Farrer of Little Gidding,
who had a principal hand in producing a volume on Virginia entitled
_Virgo Triumphans_, of which there were three issues, 1650-51, the
last of which has the map by Goddard in two states, one bearing the
inscription: _John Farrer, Esq., Collegit_. And the other: _Domina
Virginia Farrer Collegit_. It is highly probable that the material for
the book-covers worked by the Nunnery were obtained by the Farrers
direct from Virginia. But it may be well questioned whether the holy
ladies did more than the decorative and finishing stages.
The early provincial school of English binding is chiefly remarkable
for the productions of Edwards of Halifax, who, with his two sons,
James and Thomas, held a prominent rank in the book-trade at Halifax
and in London in the last and present century, and whose name is also
recognised as that of an enthusiastic amateur. It was at the sale of
the private library of James Edwards in 1815 that the celebrated
_Bedford Missal_ occurred. The bindings of Edwards present nothing
very extraordinary; but many of them have painted edges or sides,
sometimes executed with great care and skill. A copy of the _History
of Halifax_, with a view of the place thus given on the leaves, is a
favourable illustration of a practice which was formerly carried out
on an extensive scale, and of course with very unequal results. A
brisk demand arose a short time since for this branch of ingenuity;
but it has probably ere now subsided, having been in response to a
call for the artist by one or two collectors. Of course, the prices
advanced instantaneously to high-water mark, from the certainty that
the craze was ephemeral.
But the school of Edwards of Halifax probably borrowed the idea from
earlier men, who had occasionally decorated the edges of books in this
way, and we may instance Samuel Mearne, bookbinder to Charles II., by
whom a copy of North's _Plutarch_, 1657, was clothed in a richly gilt
morocco vesture, the leaves gilt and painted with flowers. Mearne also
introduced what is known as the cottage-roof pattern.
There are two fashions in the costlier department of binding which
have recommended themselves to adoption by some connoisseurs in this
country, and to which we do not find it easy to reconcile our taste:
the investiture of old English books in Parisian liveries and their
treatment by our own binders in the French style. Both courses of
proceeding strike us, we have to confess, as equally unsatisfactory.
There is an absence of harmony and accord between the book and its
cover, like dissonant notes in music. At the same time, Bedford was
fairly successful in copying the French manner for foreign works, and
his productions of this class are very numerous.
The practice of clothing English volumes in foreign liveries was
occasionally followed in early times. Messrs. Pearson & Co. bought at
Paris some years ago a lovely copy of Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-Book,
1590, in a richly gilt contemporary French, perhaps Lyonnese, calf
binding. The work was executed for an Englishman resident abroad, more
probably than for a local collector. But these instances are rare. One
of a different character occurred to our notice in a copy of Whitney's
_Choice of Emblems_, printed at Leyden in 1586, and still preserved in
the old Dutch boards--old, but not coeval.
Of amateur binding all countries have had their examples to show, and
here we do not intend the limitation of the artist to a particular
pattern and material chosen by his employer, such as the Hollis plain
red morocco, or the Duke of Roxburghe's half-morocco with marbled
paper sides for his old plays, but the conduct of the whole process
under the owner's roof, as in the case of Robert Southey, whose first
wife attired many of her husband's books in cotton raiment, and led
him to speak of them as his Cottonian library; or, nearer to us, in
that of Sir Edward Sullivan, who devotes himself to the finishing
stages of any volumes belonging to friends or otherwise, when the
article has been "forwarded" in an ordinary workshop. Sir Edward
tools, gilds, decorates, and letters, and subscribes or inscribes
himself _E. S. Aurifex_. Specimens of his handicraft occur fairly
often in the market; as to their merit, opinions differ. But after
all, there is a _soupcon_ of gratification in having a Baronet to your
binder; and we understand that Sir Edward is complaisant enough to
accept commissions outside his personal acquaintance.
A second essayist in the same way, who has become almost a member of
the vocation, is Cobden Sanderson, who bound several books of ordinary
character and moderate value for William Morris, and whose merit, if
the prices realised for the lots in the auction be any sort of a
criterion, must be extremely high. The present writer and many others
carefully examined the volumes, and failed to see any justification
for the enthusiasm awakened in at least two competitors.
Specimens occur also now and then in the market of the beautiful
morocco bindings executed by another and (as some think) superior
amateur, Mrs. Prideaux. A copy of Arnold's edition of Wordsworth's
_Select Poems_, 1893, bound by this lady in Levant morocco, with
elaborate gold tooling on back and sides--only one small octavo
volume--is priced in a catalogue of 1898 at L12, 12s.
The Parisian differs from us islanders in these particulars _toto
caelo_. There is an utter and hopeless incompatibility. His
predilection is for morocco _in genere_; he estimates it not only
above russia (_calf_ is hardly in his dictionary), but above even the
choicest vellum encasement to be procured or conceived; but on
_maroquin rouge dentelle_ or _aux petits fers_ from some
pre-revolutionary workshop he is hobbyhorsical to a pathetic extent.
The most celebrated French binders are carefully enumerated by the
latest authorities in their chronological order, but there is a
difficulty in respect to many of them analogous to that encountered by
the inquirer on English ground, since the names of several even of the
best period are unknown, and the productions are accordingly classable
only under their styles or their early owners.
A good deal of the finest French work is attributed to the two Eves,
whose _chefs d'oeuvre_ must, and can easily, be distinguished from
the tolerably frequent imitations put into the market from time to
time, some probably nearly coeval with the original examples. Prior to
the Eves, however, France had more or less skilful artists in this
line of industry. In the Frere sale at Sotheby's in 1896 occurred a
copy of Philelphus _De Liberorum Educatione_, printed by Gilles
Gourmont in 1508, in the original stamped leather covers, with the
name of Andre Boule on the sides. Under Francis I. we find the names
of Estienne Roffet, _dit le Faulcheur_, as "Relieur du Roy," and also
with that of Pignolet. The initials _G. G._ occur on a volume of 1523
in Messrs. Pearson & Co.'s catalogue, 1897-98, No. 679; they are
probably those of Gilles Gourmont above mentioned. In 1528, according
to his edition of _Meliadus de Leonnois_, Galliot du Pre was
sworn binder to the University of Paris. In the imprint of his edition
of _Lancelot du Lac_, Paris, 1533, Philippe le Noir describes himself
as one of the two sworn binders of the same University; and we gather
elsewhere that Francois Regnault was then the other.
When we reach the seventeenth century, greater facilities naturally
arise for identification of artists. One of the earliest directly
associated with his own labours was Le Gascon (1620-60), followed by
the Boyets (1650-1725), Louis de Bois (1725-28), Augustin du Seuil,
(1728-46), and Andreau (binder to the queen of Louis XV.). From the
commencing years of the eighteenth century, in addition to the binders
just enumerated, there is a fairly consecutive series, who worked for
the court and the public: Padeloup, the two Deromes, Douceur (who was
much employed by Madame de Pompadour), the two Bozerians, Le Monnier,
Tessier, Dubuisson (famous for his gilding), Simier, Thompson of
Paris, Cape, Duru, Chambolle, Lesne (who printed in 1827 a didactic
poem on his craft), Trautz, Bauzonnet, Marius-Michel, and Lortic.
Agreeably to the experience in every other department of skilled
labour connected with book-production, the French obeyed here the
early influence of Italian and German taste, and the germ was
Teutonic, as in Spain it was Moorish. The stamped leather bindings,
mainly common to Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, &c., were largely
copied in England for the royal and noble libraries of the Tudor era.
In some of those executed abroad, the artificer, as we have seen, was
accustomed to place his name or initials very conspicuously outside
the cover. Ludovicus or Lodewijk Bloc, for instance, who flourished at
Ghent or Bruges at the close of the fifteenth century, usually signs
and claims his work in an elaborate inscription. Two specimens bear:
_Ludovicus Bloc ob Amorem Christi librum hunc recte ligavi_. Jodocus
de Lede adopted a similar method of commemoration.
In the case of foreign books, especially those of French origin, the
presence of a pure and unblemished morocco binding by a recognised
artist, coupled with the armorial cognisance or _ex libris_ of some
famous amateur and the binder's ticket, which is equally _de rigueur_,
enhances the commercial importance of a volume or set of volumes
beyond calculation, and has its only analogue in the stupendous
figures paid for the Sevres soft paste porcelain of the true epoch,
when all the necessary conditions are happily united and fulfilled.
Nothing is more striking than the immense disparity between a book in
the right sort of garniture and in the wrong one, or, again, in the
true covers with some ulterior sophistication in the shape of added
arms, restored joints, renovated gilding, and a hundred other
subtleties difficult to detect. The case is on all fours with a
specimen of unimpeachable Sevres contrasted with another of which the
porcelain dates back beyond the painting and the gold. A French book
in old morocco by Derome, Le Gascon, or some other esteemed artist,
with its credentials and pedigree above suspicion, may fetch L50 or
double; the identical production in old calf or in modern morocco or
russia will not bring the price of the binding; all the magic is in
the leather and the ticket. It is not a literary object, but an
article of _vertu_. There is probably no description of Continental
books which has so greatly risen in value during the last thirty years
as the illustrated publications of the last century, provided always
that they conform to the very exacting requirements of a Parisian
exquisite. Above all, they must be of the statutory tallness and
breadth, and in the livery by bibliographical injunction and usage
prescribed.
No more impressive exemplification of the difference between a book or
set of books in the French series, in the _right_ and in the _wrong_
state, could be afforded or desired than the edition of Moliere, 1773,
which in contemporary morocco may be worth L100, and in calf or any
other ordinary dress a five-pound note. But after all, a still more
signal case is that of Laborde's _Chansons mises en Musique_,
published in the same year, which, even in thoroughly preserved
contemporary calf, brings under the hammer in proof state nearly
L200, while in modern morocco it is rather dear at a quarter of that
amount.
The extreme rarity of pure and genuine specimens of the work of the
earliest foreign binders--nay, of our own--has naturally produced a
large inheritance of imitations of varied character and degree. There
is nothing to save the amateur from deception but the same kind of
training which qualifies collectors in other departments to
distinguish what is true from what is false. A man who proposes to
himself to make Bindings a speciality, cannot do better than graduate
by studying the most trustworthy and contemporary guides on the
subject in different literatures, and then we should send him on a
tour round the great public and private libraries of Great Britain and
the Continent. This, of course, applies only where the undertaker is
in thorough earnest, and wishes to spare himself a good deal of
expense and a good deal of mortification. Illustrated catalogues are
of very indifferent value, especially those of auctioneers, which too
often offer the result of sophistication so cleverly disguised that to
an inexperienced eye the repair is not palpable. If one goes in search
of _desiderata_ to the trade, let it be to the dealer who knows his
business and charges his price, but who supplies the article, and not
to the empiric, who charges a price and does not supply it, for the
excellent reason (among others) that this party does not know a fine
binding when he sees it--or a spurious one.
In curiosities generally it is the safest plan for a private collector
to place himself more or less in the hands of the highest firms in the
particular line which he selects, provided that he is not one of a
hundred thousand, and is a mile or two ahead even of professional
experts. Then, wherever he goes and whatever he buys, he is always
armed _cap-a-pie_. To him, to him solely, are the lots almost as
precious as the purse of Fortunatus; he alone it is who may fall in
with Caxtons, Clovis Eves, Rembrandts, Syracusan medallions, for a
song, and carry them home without a qualm.
A curious case, unique in its way, of what may be characterised as
perverted ingenuity, occurred at a public sale in November 1897 at
Sotheby's rooms. It was, in the words of the catalogue, "A Remarkable
Collection of Magnificent Modern Bindings, Formed by an Amateur;" but
the salient feature was--in fact, the ruling one, with one
exception--that the whole of the specimens represented imitations of
ancient work and of historical copies of early books. The interiors
were authentic; they had simply served as the medium for carrying out
a rather whimsical, not to say foolish, project, and the hundred and
ten lots, destitute of any conspicuous or genuine interest, probably
yielded very much less than the cost of their counterfeit liveries.
The present volume is not a treatise on Binding, and we can merely
indicate the general bearings of this branch and aspect of
Book-Collecting, on which several useful, and some very sumptuous and
beautiful, monographs have appeared of recent years. An amateur cannot
do better, for purposes of reference, than secure a copy of Mr.
Quaritch's _Catalogue of Bindings_, 1888, which includes particulars
of all the principal works on the subject, English and foreign, and
one of Zaehnsdorf's _Short History of Bookbinding_, 1895, with
illustrations of processes, and a glossary of styles and terms used in
the art. Mr. Wheatley and Mr. Brassington have also produced
monographs upon it.
In America, during many years past, there has been a laudable effort
to establish a national taste and feeling in this direction; for
collectors in the States formerly made a general rule of sending their
books either to London or to Paris for treatment. The institution of
the Grolier Club of New York nearly twenty years since was a step in
the direction of independence, and its _Transactions_ form an
interesting and creditable series. The Club printed a catalogue of its
library of early typographical examples in 1895, with facsimiles of
bindings.
The modern French school of literary architecture unites in the type,
the paper, the illustrations such a remarkable degree of taste and
feeling, combined with economy of production, that in England there is
no present approach to what may be termed the _ensemble_ of a volume
placed in the market by our neighbours. This style of book-making asks
of course age to mellow it, and perchance the materials employed may
not bear the test of time and manipulation by successive owners, like
the old eighteenth-century work. But as they emerge from the workshop,
and stand upon the shelves or in the case, their aspect is decidedly
agreeable, while half a roomful of them are to be had for the price of
a Clovis Eve or even a first-rate Padeloup. Very much, on the
contrary, we are apt to conceive a dislike for that unwieldy imperial
_format_ which some of the Parisian _libraires editeurs_ affect, and
which perhaps occupy the same place in French literature of the day as
our detestable English _editions de luxe_.