Judging a Book by Its Cover
Title
Judging a Book by Its Cover
Collection Items
Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War (Latin)
Pigskin binding tooled in blind with brass catches & clasps, central bosses & corner pieces, ca. 1473, for the Benedictine monastery of St. Magnus at Füssen im Algäu, Bavaria. The binding may be the work of Johann Schüssler, who sold his five…
Letters (Latin)
Brown calf blind-tooled in a panel and saltire pattern, with catches & clasps and five brass bosses on each cover, 1476 or later. The binding was created for the Benedictine abbey at Mount St. George (Georgenberg) in the Austrian Tyrol. The front…
Book of Hours, Use of Rome (Latin)
A rare miniature incunable by a renowned typefounder and printer. The binding design is inspired by a 1540s Parisian binding by Jean Picard for Jean Grolier. It was created in Paris by Théodore Hagué for Ambroise Firmin-Didot, in the 1870s. Hagué…
Moralia in Job (Latin manuscript)
The binding is English from the 1830s. The panels affixed to the covers, however, have been saved from a French ca. 1500 binding of tan calf, with repeated roll-tool floral patterns that saw substantial favor over the final decade of the 15th and…
Book of Hours, Use of Tournai (Latin manuscript)
The binding of brown velvet over wooden boards is a rare survivor from the last third of the 15th century. Bindings in such fabrics as linen, silk, velvet, or tapestry were once common, especially for books of private devotion, like the present…
Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Latin)
The first book to carry the name of Jean Grolier, dedicated to him and edited by his Italian tutor, Gaspare Mazzoli da Argile. The binding of brown goatskin, tooled in blind and gilt, is Roman, ca. 1510, attributed by Anthony R. A. Hobson to the…
Bronze binding medallion in relief
The medallion portrays the deified Julius Caesar, crowned with laurel, in right profile, paired with the augur’s crooked staff (lituus). An asterisk represents the comet seen after Caesar’s assassination. This image, derived from Medici intaglio…
Bibliography of the Famous Writers of Great Britain (Latin)
This important early bibliography of British authors is a hybrid production. The book was printed in the Rhineland, bound there in brown calf, and impressed with panel stamps on both covers; the lettering of the royal inscriptions was added in…
On the Latin Language (Latin)
An English binding, ca. 1584, tooled in blind in very dark brown calf, with the arms block of Queen Elizabeth I stamped on both covers. This is a presentation copy to Elizabeth, probably from the London bookseller authorized to import scholarly…
Letters (Latin)
This binding for Jean Grolier was created by the Cupid’s Bow Binder, an otherwise anonymous binder or atelier working in Paris from 1547 to 1555. The eponymous tool, from which his sobriquet derives, is stamped in gold repeatedly around the central…