An Essay in the History of Gold-Tooled
Bindings by Herbert P. Horne
London 1894
18
Facsimiles of Bindings, Nos. 8 and 9, are ornamented with a Greek fret, in red and blue. But this
is, properly speaking, a painted edge, of which many very elaborate examples are to be found,
done in water-colors, which tended to the nature of a stain. In the possession of a well-known
English collector is a remarkable Italian library, which formerly belonged to Odorico Pillone, of
Casteldardo, in the Venetian State. It consists in one hundred and seventy volumes, for the
most part folios, dating from the end of the fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth, century,
and bound, for the most part, in dark pig-skin, with brass bosses and clasps. Of these books,
more than one hundred and forty are remarkable for having their edges painted; and the
boards of some twenty of them are enriched by designs made by the pen, and washed in with
Indian ink; the work of Cesare VeceIlio, the nephew of Titian. The designs on the fore edges of
the books are chiefly composed of single figures, drawn and coloured in a large and decorative
manner: thus the figures of Dante, and Galen, appear on their several works; while St. Jerome
is variously depicted, sometimes as a cardinal, and sometimes as a hermit, on the edges of the
portly edition of his works, printed by Froben at Basle [Catalogue of the Lz"brary of Thomas
Brooke, London, 1891, vol. ii. p. 662.].
Books, whose fore edges were painted in this manner, were not intended to be placed on
shelves, after our modern fashion. It is a common thing to find the title of a fifteenth century
book, written along its fore edge, in a contemporary hand; and this is sometimes found, when
the name of the author is stamped upon the upper board, which was the common practice,
during the first half of the sixteenth century.
The reason of this lies in the practice of those times, to .place books upon their boards, one
upon another in the shelves, with their fore edges exposed. The chained manuscripts in the
Laurentian Library at Florence are still to be seen preserved in this manner: and the same
arrangement may be noticed in a small picture in the National Gallery, an interior ascribed to the
younger Steenwyck [No. II 32.] ; Although some of the books are here placed, so as to expose
the pattern on their boards. M. Henri Bouchot, in his little work, entitled Le Livre, has reproduced
from a manuscript, a representation of a library, on which the books are placed after this Jatter
fashion, upon sloping desks, not unlike those in the Library at Siena.
This custom of placing books so as to expose either their fore edge, or their boards, accounts
for the plain backs of the earliest gold-tooled bindings, for the occurrence of the name of the
book, upon their upper boards, and for the richness of their fore edges. The circumstances,
which occasioned these peculiarities in early bindings, occasioned, also, the use of clasps, or
strings: for the art of forwarding was at that time so imperfectly understood, that some means
or other was necessary, in order to make the boards lie parallel to one another, and to prevent
the volume from gaping, at the fore edge. I do not speak of books printed upon vellum, for
which a clasp or string was requisite to prevent the skins from curling; but of books printed
upon paper, in which the impression of the type was often greater than its own thickness.