by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
and often having clasps, corners, and protecting bosses of metal. In the twelfth century the English
leather bindings produced at London, Winchester, Durham and other centres, were pre-eminent. Miss
Prideaux instances some books which were bound for Bishop Pudsey, and which are now in the cathedral
library of Durham, as "perhaps the finest monuments of this class of work in existence." The sides of
these volumes are blind-tooled; that is, the designs are impressed by means of dies or tools with various
patterns and representations of men and of fabulous creatures, but not gilded.
Certain volumes, however, were treated with particular honour, either at the expense of a wealthy and
book-loving owner, or for the purpose of presentation to some great personage, and for these
sumptuous bindings the materials employed were various and costly. A Latin psalter which was written
for Melissenda, wife of Fulk, Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem, has a very wonderful French binding.
The covers are of wood, and each bears a series of delicate ivory carvings of Byzantine work. An upper
cover shows incidents in the life of David, and symbolical figures, and the lower cover scenes representing
the works of Mercy, with figures of birds and animals. Rubies and turquoises dotted here and there help
to beautify the ivory. This book is in the British Museum.
Another specimen in the same collection may be taken as an example of the use of enamel as a
decoration for bindings. This is a Latin manuscript of the Gospels of SS. Luke and John, which is enclosed
in wooden boards bound in red leather. In the upper cover is a sunk panel of Limoges enamel on copper
gilt, representing Christ in glory. The work is of the thirteenth century. These enamelled bindings were
often additionally decorated with gold and jewels.
was sometimes made in the case of small devotional works.
The leather of the back and sides was continued at the
bottom in a long tapering slip, at the end of which was a
kind of button, so that the book might be fastened to the
dress or girdle. Slender chains were often used for the same
purpose.
About the time of the invention of printing, leather bindings
began to be decorated with gold tooling. Tooling is the name
given to the designs impressed upon the leather with
various small dies so manipulated as to make a connected
pattern. When the impressions are gilded the dull leather is
brightened and beautified in proportion to the skill and taste
expended by the workman. The art of gold tooling is
believed to have originated in the East, and to have been
brought to Italy by Venetian traders, or, as it has also been
suggested, through the manuscripts which were dispersed
at the fall of Constantinople. In any case, it was in Italy that
it was first adopted and brought to perfection, and other
European countries learned the art from Italian craftsmen.
Chief among the early Italian gilt bindings are those made of
the finest leathers and inscribed THO. MALIOLI ET
AMICORVM. Nothing whatever is known of Thomasso Maioli,
fine linen.
What Maioli appears to have been among Italian book-collectors, Jean Grolier, Viscomte d'Aguisy, was
among French bibliophiles. He held for a time the post of Treasurer of the Duchy of Milan, and while in
Italy he collected books for his library and made the acquaintance of Aldus Manutius. Many of the Aldine
books are dedicated to him, for Aldus occasionally stood in need of financial aid and found in Grolier a
generous and practical patron of literature. Some of the famous bindings which distinguish Grolier's
books were executed in Italy, others in France, where Italian bookbinders were then teaching their art to
the native workmen.
They display the same style of design that decorates the books of Maioli, and Maioli's benevolent
inscription too, Grolier adapted to his own use, and stamped upon certain of his books 10. GROLIERII ET
AMICORVM. The exact signification of these words is obscure. At first sight they might appear to refer
delicately to the joy with which the owner of the book would place it at the disposal of his friends, but
this does not accord with what is known of the character of book-lovers. Perhaps their only meaning is
that Maioli and Grolier were at all times ready to please their friends and to gratify themselves by
exhibiting their treasures. But since several copies of the same work are known to have been bound for
Grolier-for instance, five copies of the Aldine Virgil-it has been suggested that he occasionally made
presents of his books, though he drew the line at lending them.
Grolier's copy of the De Medicina of Celsus, which is in the British Museum, is bound in a somewhat
different style from that usually associated with his name. It is in brown leather; blind-tooled except for
some gold and coloured roundels in different parts of the device. In the centre of both covers is a
medallion in colours, that on the upper cover representing Curtius leaping into the abyss in the Forum,
and that on the lower cover representing the defence of the bridge by Horatius. This is an Italian binding.