Browse Items (13 total)

Three volumes bound as two in pigskin over wooden boards, probably from the Rhineland, in the 1580s–1590s. The blind-tooled décor features panel stamps in blind with the Old Testament themes of Judith with the head of Holofernes and of Jael and…

The bookblock edges are all gilt and decorated for the imperial count Joachim of Ortenburg, Bavaria, in 1585. The fore-edge (displayed) depicts the Sacrifice of Isaac, an angel staying Abraham’s knife hand. The contemporary German binding of wooden…

The décor on both panels of this binding is formed by a single plaquette stamp in gilt, heightened with gold and black enamel. Each spine compartment is gilded with a stamp incorporating four dolphins in the shape of a closed S: S-fermé (= fermesse,…

This elaborately gilt French binding is in a developed Fanfare style and may be from Lyon. It bears the gilt armorials of Girolamo Dandini, who was created cardinal in 1551 and died in 1559, which would limit the year of its creation to within the…

This collection of royal decrees on publishing is in workaday plain vellum. It was bound for Michael Folkhammer, a German lawyer and administrator, who signed it, dated it 1552, and localized it in Bourges, where this compilation of publishing…

This calf binding, featuring a blind-stamped “Spes” (Hope) panel in the Catholic version, is the work of Jacob Bathen, dating to 1547–1548. Bathen worked as a bookbinder in Louvain (Leuven) from 1520 to 1560. He produced “Spes” bindings in both…

This binding with grotesque humanoid masks is an excellent example of an uncommon style from the late decades of the century. It was created by the Geneva Kings’ Binder, an atelier of skilled Huguenot craftsmen, exiled in Switzerland for their…

This binding for Jean Grolier was created in Paris by a royal binder and the Cupid’s Bow Binder, in the 1550s or 1560s. The bookblock and the panels on the covers are the original elements; the current binding is French, from the mid-19th century. …

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…

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…