ENGLISH BOOKBINDINGS ADDED TO THEDEPARTMENT OF PRINTED BOOKS

1963 TO 1974

HOWARD M. NIXON

THE most important acquisition of bookbindings during this period has unquestionablybeen that of the Henry Davis Collection. It is, indeed, far the most important gift of thisnature that the Department has ever received, being almost the whole of one of the threegreat collections of bookbindings made in England during this century, the others beingthose of Major J.R. Abbey and of the Broxbourne Library formed by Albert Ehrman.Books in Mr. Davis's collection which had been specifically acquired for their impor-tance as texts are destined for the new University of Ulster at Coleraine/ since they are

Fig. I. Binding by Henry Evans, c. 1657.Blue turkey, with red and citron onlays.C.io8.n.7. 160x85x35 mm

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almost all duplicated in the British Library. But over a thousand decorated bindings ofall periods, many of them of outstanding importance, form part of the Davis Gift to theBritish Library and are available for display and will be available for study at Blooms-bury, although they remain in Mr. Davis's possession during his lifetime. They willnot be further discussed in this article, since they have already been the subject of a briefreport by Miss Mirjam Romme, now Mrs. Foot,^ who will soon have ready for press afull-dress catalogue, in two volumes.

Major J. R. Abbey, who died on Christmas Eve 1969, had disposed of his older book-bindings in a series of notable sales at Sotheby's during his lifetime, but before the firstof these he had presented to the Department the book which he knew we coveted mostfrom his collection, the little binding by Henry Evans (fig. i) in dark blue turkey withred and citron onlays of which G.D.Hobson wrote *this is without exception the mostexquisite late seventeenth-century English binding that has been reproduced'.^ Purchasesof English bindings at or immediately after the first of Major Abbey's sales, which beganat Sotheby's on 21 June 1965, included three of the sixteenth century. Nicholas deOrbellis, Super sententias (Paris, 1515) was bound in brown calf blocked in blind withpanels of St. George killing the dragon, signed IR, and of the Baptism of Christ.^ Thesepanels, which always occur together and evidently belonged to the London bookseller,John Reynes, are relatively common - Oldham records fifty-two examples - but theonly specimen of them in the Library was in poor condition and had the Baptism ofChrist panel in a different state. The other two books, both gold-tooled with an interlacepainted black, have subsequently been shown to have been decorated with the tools ofJohn de Planche, probably a religious exile from Dijon, who was one of the leadingbinders in London between 1567 and 1572.5 The first, a folio which contains a Book ofCommon Prayer of 1566 and a Psalter of 1567, has tooled on the covers: WILLIAM ALYNLORDE MAIOR 1571, and was clearly bound for Sir William Alyn, or Allen, a memberof the Mercers' Company, who was Lord Mayor of London in that year (fig. 2). Itscentrepiece is that found on two bindings in the British Library made for QueenElizabeth I, which are both signed IDP,' and the lion mask and cornerpieces of Alyn'sbinding connect it with a large French Bible bound for the Queen in 1567 with herpainted portrait and arms, also in the British Library,^ and with a Lycosthenes, bearingthe arms of Sir Nicholas Bacon, which was formerly in the library of Mr. Ralph Bankesof Kingston Lacy,^ but is not apparently there any longer. Other De Planche tools arefound on the second Abbey binding, an Osorius of 1576, which bears the name THELADiE RVSSELL, and may possibly have been bound in London by his successor afterhe had returned to France.'^ The only other binding known from the library of LadyRussell is in the Royal Library at Windsor.'' It has been suggested that she was Elizabeth,the widow of Sir Thomas Hoby, who married John Lord Russell, second son of Francis,second Earl of Bedford. She was one of the exceedingly learned daughters of Sir AnthonyCooke - two of her sisters were respectively the wife of Lord Burleigh and the motherof Francis Bacon - and the Dictionary of National Biography happily reports that 'theordering of pompous funerals was her delight'.

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Fig. 2. Binding by John de Planche, 1571.Brown calf, blocked and tooled in gold.

C.io8.aaa.3. 303x205x47 mm

Fig. 4. Binding designed byAthenian Stuart, 1762.

Red morocco, gold-tooled.C.i6o.ee.2. 585X400x42 mm

Fig. 3. Binding by Roger Bartlett, c. 1685.Red turkey, gold-tooled.

C.io8.eee.8. 323 /- 210 x 57 mm

. Binding by Zaehnsdorf, c. 1861.Red morocco, gold-tooled,

with onlays of brown, green, and black.C.io8.t.2. 435x330x60 mm

Seventeenth-century acquisitions from this sale included what may be consideredthe prototype of a modern publisher's binding, which is found on a number of copiesof Abraham Darcie's Annales of Elizabeth Queene of England (1625).'^ They are of browncalf, blocked in gold with a panel depicting Queen Elizabeth I, crowned, holding theorb and sceptre, and encircled with clouds. This posthumous portrait was used onlyon copies of this book, in contrast to the blind-stamped panels in use a century earlier,which often have trade-marks and initials. These were used on books of different kindsretailed by a particular bookseller. They were succeeded by gold-blocked plaques usedon small books of devotion. Bibles, and Prayer Books, and a Whole Book of Psalms inmetre (1631)'^ purchased after this sale is a late example of a style which was introducedabout 1570. It bears the initials E.C. of its first owner.

The Library also bought an important document in the history of English bindingof the Restoration period. Major Abbey's well-known 'backless' binding,'4 which G.D.Hobson was able to attribute to Richard Bailey on the strength of the statement inBagford's Notes on Bookbinding among the Harleian MSS. that he 'hath contrived tobind a book that you could not know the fore-edge from the back, both being cut andgilded alike'. Five very similar examples of these bindings are now known, all bound inblack with red and citron onlays and decorated with the same tools. They were evidentlyall bound within a year or two of 1700.

Another important binding of this period from the third Abbey sale was a large folioBible of 1659, bound in black turkey with very elaborate gold tooling in the 'fanfare'style (developed in France about 1575) which clearly comes from the shop of the royalbinder Samuel Mearne.'^ It, and its companion 1662 Prayer Book now in the Hunt-ington Library, were given in 1681 to his godson, Devereux Knightley, by NathanielCrewe, Bishop of Durham. As Clerk of the Closet to Charles II the Bishop received ashis perquisites the books used by the king himself in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall.Those books, however, always have the royal cypher on the covers and the royal armsor cypher painted under the gold on the fore-edge. These two bindings in the fanfarestyle have the Crucifixion painted on the edges and may perhaps have been used on thealtar at the Chapel Royal.

Other Restoration bindings added in the period under review include a gold-tooledblack turkey example on John Oldham's Works (1687). ^ This subsequently became oneof the foundation members of a group now attributed to Elizabeth Dickinson's binder.It has the lozenge-shaped centre, made up of small tools, found on a number of theworks of this binder, who was active in the 1680s and from whose shop comes a bindingin the Pierpont Morgan Library lettered 'ELIZABETH DICKINSON HER BOOK 1688'.

The bindings of Roger Bartlett, who was active between the Great Fire of 1666, afterwhich he left London for Oxford, and 1689, were represented in the Department by onlytwo octavo volumes before a handsome folio specimen was purchased in 1968 (fig.3)-It had been sold the year before in the third Abbey sale^' and was illustrated by G.D.Hobson, who first identified Bartlett's work, as no. 40 in English Bindings in the Libraryof3. R. Abbey.

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In 1963 the Library only possessed one specimen in poor condition of the work of theDevotional Binder, so named by G. D. Hobson because so many of his bindings occuron books by the author of the Whole Duty of Man. In that year a beautiful specimen waspurchased with the aid of the Friends of the National Libraries.^^ It is on a book by thecustomary author, usually thought to be Richard Allestree, and has an interestingprovenance - the Earl of Orford, Noel F.Barwell, Dr. H.M. Davies, and Mrs. GraceWhitney HofF, Barwell and Davies originally tried to edit the book which finally appearedas Bindings in Cambridge Libraries by G. D. Hobson in 1929. Two further bindings fromthe same shop, also on Allestree books, were presented in 1974 by Mr. Paul Getty, Jun.'^All three are in this binder's characteristic style with a number of distinctive versions ofcommon tools of the period including rather plump versions of the drawer-handle.

The most distinguished London binder at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies was Robert Steel, who had been apprenticed to Samuel Mearne and probablytook over the Mearne binding shop after Charles Mearne's death. One recent accessionthat may be attributed to him is a quarto by Thomas Greenhill, Nekrokedeia: or theart of embalming (1705), which seems to combine in its design elements of the old 'fan-fare' style with a lozenge-shaped centre as used by Steel's apprentice, Thomas Elliott,on his bindings for the Harleian Library in the i72os. *' Another, also in red turkey, isa more conservative 'cottage-roof binding in beautiful condition on B.Jenks, Prayersand Offices of Devotions (1697).^^

In 1963 Mr. Frank Benger presented two books believed to have been bound by JohnBrindley, binder to Queen Caroline and to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and founder ofthe bookselling firm which under the successive names of James Robson, Thomas andWilliam Boone, and F.S.Ellis survived until the 1930s. In 1928 Mr.Benger, with hispartner in the firm of Ellis, George Smith, illustrated one of these books in The OldestLondon Bookshop, a copy of W.Maitland's The History of London (1739) bound in gold-tooled red morocco, with the arms of Frederick, Prince of Wales. ^ It seems questionable,however, whether this book, which was not published by Brindley, was bound in hisshop. The binder to the Prince of Wales did not necessarily bind all books presented tohim. Brindley's tools are certainly to be found on the other book, which he did publish.This is a copy of the Duke of Newcastle's Methode et invention nouvelle de dresser leschevaux (1737), which has also a fore-edge decorated under the gold with George IPsarms. ^ Brindley seems to have been the only binder between 1720 and 1760 to practisethis peculiarly English technique.

One other important gap was filled at the first Abbey sale by the purchase of a copyof volume i of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett's The Antiquities of Athens (1762) inthe special presentation binding of gold-tooled red morocco with classical ornamentsand a central medallion of Athene Parthenos (fig. 4), copied from a pastiche by Stuarton a plan of the Acropolis dated 1753, which was first published in the second volumeof the book.^ As the Sotheby's catalogue pointed out, this binding, which must almostcertainly have been designed by 'Athenian' Stuart, precedes the well-known presentationbindings on copies of Robert Adam's Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at

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Spalatro of 1764. Stuart thus produced the first neo-classical binding and not Adam,but they set no immediate fashion and the London binders of the 1770s, under theleadership of John Baumgarten from Hanover, suddenly discovered rococo ornament.The only other strictly neo-classical binding of the 1760s is George Ill's copy of theStrawberry Hill edition of The Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury?-^ The un-Walpoliannature of this binding is probably accounted for by the fact that Lord Powis, as ownerof the manuscript, took part of the edition and probably gave this copy to the king.

Although Horace Walpole normally had his books bound rather soberly in brown calf,with his arms blocked in gold, and with green edges, he did possess at least one gold-tooled binding in red morocco. When this copy of Sir David Dalrymple's Memorialsand Letters relating to the history of Britain in the reign of James the First (Glasgow 1762)appeared in the sale room in July 1966, with a note on a fly-leaf in Walpole's hand 'boundby Robiquet',-*^ Mr. Wilmarth S. Lewis graciously conceded that his interest in Walpole'slibrary must give way to ours in a binding by a man known to have been one of theleading binders in London, but of whom nothing else is known except for his work atHolkham.

Another book bound in the second half of the eighteenth century was acquired in thesame year, the two volumes of Vicesimus Knox's Elegant Extracts {c. 1785). They arein an uncommon style of stained and gold-tooled calf imitating the surface of an inlaidwalnut table. At the foot of each of them is a black label reading SHEPPERSON &REYNOLDS. BINDERS. 1789.^'They are listed in Graham Pollard's 1955 edition of TAEarliest Directory of the Book Trade (1785) as 'booksellers' at 137 Oxford Street (p. 18),and Charles Ramsden records signed bindings by a T. Reynolds at this address, one ofthem possibly bound about 1796.

In 1805 Thomas Hope, ardent supporter of Neo-classicism, presented to the RoyalInstitution a copy of the Didot Horace of 1799 bound by Staggemeier & Welcher in bluestraight-grain morocco ornamented in gold with lyre and Pegasus tools and with car-touches including Hope's initials. The Department was very pleased to have the oppor-tunity of acquiring such a well-documented and handsome binding, which Dibdindescribed as the 'ne plus ultra' of Staggemeier's 'bibliopegistic skill', adding that Hope'gave the binder his plan . . . of book-embeUishment'.^^ Both this and the Stuart andRevett book mentioned above were lent to the Council of Europe exhibition The AgeofNeo-classictsm at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1972. ^

During most of the nineteenth century the leading binding firms were required bytheir patrons to produce pastiches of early styles, and Zaehnsdorfs, founded in 1842 bya Hungarian who had worked in Stuttgart, Vienna, and Paris before coming to London,did much of their work in the 'Grolier', 'Maioli', 'Mearne', and 'Payne' styles. Fromtime to time, however, an international exhibition would give them an opportunity toproduce something of a more modern nature. In 1966 the Wigmore Bindery - withwhom they were then incorporated, although they have since resumed their separateidentity - presented two fine examples, one on a Dante, VInferno (Paris, 1851), and theother on La Satnte Bible (Tours, 1866). °

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r

Fig. 6. Jewelled binding by Sangorski and Sutcliffe, c. 1905.Blue morocco, gold-tooled with onlays of green and red.

C.109.P.20. 252 X 162X20 mm

187

At the beginning of the present century the influence of T.J.Cobden-Sandersonbegan to make itself felt in bookbinding in the same way as William Morris had influencedprinting. His pupil and apprentice, Douglas Cockerell, brother of Sir Sydney Cockerellof Fitzwilliam Museum fame, taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and twoof his pupils, Francis Sangorski and George Sutcliffe, worked for Cockerell for a yearor two before setting up in business together in 1901. One ofthe specialities of their firmin its earlier years was the production of elaborate inlaid bindings decorated with jewelsand precious stones, the most famous of which lies at the bottom ofthe Atlantic. It wentdown on the Titanic with Harry Widener who bought this copy of Fitzgerald's OmarKhayyam in 1912 and was taking it back to the United States. The U.S.A. was the destina-tion of most of Sangorski and Sutcliffe's jewelled bindings - there are a number in theNewberry Library in Chicago - and the Department acquired one (fig. 6) for the firsttime in 1971. ^ Peacocks were much in evidence on many of these bindings and a finelyexecuted example of such a bird inonlaid leather is found on the covers ofan album (fig. 7)given by Mr. and Mrs. A. Ehrman in 1966 through the Friends ofthe National Libraries.It was bound about 1925 at the Camberwell School of Art by William Ashbee to a designby the instructor. Alec Vaughan, who had himself been a pupil of George SutclifFe. ^

When Albert Ehrman died in 1969, his widow and his son, Mr. John Ehrman, roundedoff his benefactions - he liked to give the Museum a present on his birthday every year -by presenting through the Friends ofthe National Libraries two bindings in his memory.One of these was an elaborate exhibition binding in oniaid gold-tooled green moroccoby Arthur J. Gray of J. P. Gray and Sons of Cambridge, probably bound about 1914."The other will be mentioned in a later article dealing with foreign bindings acquiredduring this period.

The long-established London firm of Kelly & Son developed in the first quarter ofthe present century what they termed a Kelliegram binding. An example acquired in1971 on an extra-illustrated Thomson's Seasons (1857) shows a resemblance to the FrenchJansenist' bindings ofthe late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, having soberlyplain green morocco covers with very elaborate oniaid doublures of buff morocco witha design of tulips. **

Thomas Harrison was a well-known twentieth-century teacher and writer on book-binding in memory of whom a memorial prize competition ran for nearly twenty yearsup to 1974. Mr. Ellic Howe gave the Department a copy of Harrison's The BookbindingCraft and Industry bound by the author himself in inlaid brown morocco with a designincorporating the tools ofthe craft. ^

The opportunity has also been taken to add to the Department's holdings of bindingsby modern craftsmen and works have been added by the following: Anthony Cains, ^Jeff Clements,37 S.M.Cockerell,^^ Elizabeth Greenhill,^^ Arthur Johnson,***' TrevorJones,**' Brian Maggs,'*^ Bernard Middleton,'*^ Ivor Robinson,*^ Faith Shannon,**5 SallyLou Smith,4^ C.Philip Smith,**' and the late H.J.D.Yardley.*^ Some of these werepresented by Mr. Anthony Fair, and some others bought to acknowledge the servicesgiven by the binders to the British effort to restore the books damaged in the Biblioteca

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Fig. y. Peacock binding designed by Alec Vaughan, c. 1925.Blue morocco, gold-tooled with onlays of green, brown, and red.

C.108.V.1. 250x380x33 mm

Nazionale, Florence, in the disastrous flood of 4 November 1966 - an effort organizedunder Mr. Peter Waters by the British Museum through the Italian Art and ArchivesRescue Fund, and in which members of the staff of H.M.S.O. Bindery at Bloomsburyplayed a very important part.' ^ A special binding produced in that Bindery in 1973 wassewn by Helen Watkins, forwarded and bound by Keith Champ, and finished by ColinClark.50

1 H. A. Feisenberger, 'The Henry Davis Collec-tion, II, the Ulster Gift*, Book Collector, Autumn1972, pp. 339-55-

2 Mirjam M. Romme, 'The Henry Davis Collec-tion, I, the British Museum Gift', Ibid., Spring1969, pp. 23-44, pi. i-xii.

3 English Bindings in the Library of J.R. Abbey(i94o),p.5o.SinceHobsonwroteithasbeenestab-lished that Henry Evans whose name appears onthe fore-edge of this binding (C. 108.n.7) owned a

binder's shop. Cf. H. M. Nixon, English Restora-tion Bookbindings (1974), p. 28, no. 47.

4 Lot 524; now C.io8.ppp.8. The panels are J.B.Oldham, Blind Panels of English Binders (Cam-bridge, 1958), ST. 19 and BIB. 17.

5 H. M. Nixon, 'Elizabethan Gold-tooled Bind-ings', Essays in honour of Victor Scholderer(Mainz, 1970), pp. 243-53 i "os. 7 and 11 on thelist on p. 246.

6 Lot 211; now C. io8.aaa.3. G. D. Hobson, English

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Bindings in the Library ofJ.R.Ahhey (1940),no, 15. Minor repairs to the corners of the boardscarried out in the H.M.S.O. bindery at theBritish Library have greatly improved theappearance of this book.

7 C.iS.b.ii and 675.f.r6. W.Y.Fletcher, EnglishBookbindings in the British Museum (1895),pis. XX and XXI.

8 C.23.e.10. Cyril Davenport, Royal English Book-bindings (i8q6), fig. 12.

9 Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition of Book-bindings {iSgj), pi. CXI.

10 Lot 526; now C.io8.ff.iQ.11 Sir R. R. Holmes, Specimens of Bookbinding from

the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (1893), pi. 96.It was bound by the MacDurnan Gospelsbinder.

12 Lot 244; now C.io8.pp.6.13 Lot 571; now C.108.P.4. Cf. H. M. Nixon, Brox-

bourne Library (1956), pp. 118-20.14 Lot 218; now C.io8.d.35. G.D.Hobson, English

Bindings in the Library of J. R. Abbey (1940),no. 61. H.M.Nixon, English Restoration Book-bindings (1974), no. 108.

15 Sotheby's, 19-21 June 1967, 1682; nowC.io8.tt.6. English Restoration Bookbindings,no. 27.

16 C.130.a.28. English Restoration Bookbindings,no. 95.

17 Lot 1770; now C.io8.eee.8. T. Comber, A Com-panion to the Temple (1684).

18 The Government of the Tongue (Oxford, 1667),C.io8.d.32. English Restoration Bookbindings,no. 85. Bibliotheque de Madame Whitney Hoff(Paris, 1933), no. 214, pl.LXXI.

19 The Art of Contentment (Oxford, 1675);The Gentleman's Calling (London, 1676);C.i75.m.i7(i, 2).

20 C.iog.f. 12. English Restoration Bookbindings,no. 39.

21 C.io8.n.i6. It was not included in the EnglishRestoration Bookbindings exhibition.

22 C.io8.m.7.23 C.io8.t.i. a. Book Collector, Winter 1962,

p. 466.24 Sotheby's, 21-3 June 1965,6^7; now C. i6o.ee.2.

Book Collector, Winter 1965, p. 538.25 British Library, 132.C.2. Ibid., Spring 1953,

p. 66.26 Christie's, 15 June 1966, 66; now C.io8.ppp.4.

Cf.W.O.Hassall, 'Portrait of a Bibliophile: 11.

Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester', Book Collector^Autumn 1959, pp. 255-6.

27 C.io8.g.26, 27. Cf. Ibid-, Autumn 1970, p. 356.28 C.180.CC.4. T.F.Dibdin, Bibliographical

Decameron, \\ {1817), p. 205.29 The catalogue incorrectly stated that they were

in the Royal Academy section of the exhibition.30 C.io8.t.2; C.io8.t.3.31 C.109.p.20; E.Spenser, Epithalamion (1903).32 C.108.V.1.33 C.108.X.10; W. A. Clouston, ed., A Group of

Eastern Romances (1889).34 C.108.U.26.35 C.io8.n.i4. In 1975 Designer Bookbinders took

over the award of these prizes.36 C.io8.eee.4; E.S.Miers, The American Civil

War (1961).37 C.I09.1.22; G.R.Hamilton, The Latin Portrait

(1929).38 C.io8.y.5; Holy Bible (Nonesuch Press, 1963),

3 vols.39 C.io8.ee.7; J.Maritain, Patriarch Tree (1965).

C.109.P.15; A. Miller, After the Fall (1^64).40 C.io8.y.i; Brendan Behan's New York (New

York, 1964). C. 108.n. II.(1-4); P.A.Renoir,Nudes (1959) and three other small volumes.C.io8.gg.35; J. Russell, G.5ra^ae (1959).

41 C.108.W.4; H.E. Bates, Through the Woods(1936).

42 C.108.W.5; J. Gay, Trivia {n^6g).43 C.io8.d.39; B. C. Middleton, History of English

Craft Bookbinding Technique (1963). C.i6o.c.i7;H.M.Nixon, Twelve Books (1953)-

44 C. io8.m.6; W. Shakespeare, Macbeth (Paris,(1958). C.108.W.6; Revelation of Saint John theDivine (Oxford, 1969).

45 C. ro9.p.i4; C. A. G.Bertram, Paul Nash (1955).46 C.io8.d.38; C. Perrault, Contes de ma Mere TOie

(1959); C.io8.y.3; F.Scott Fitzgerald, Crack-up(New York, 1945).

47 C. I o8.d.4O; Plotinus, The Enneads (1962).C.io8.eee.ii; Homer, IUiad (^ Odyssey {1931)-C. 108.pp.8; F. le Lionnais, Time (1963).C. 108.pp.9; E. Lalou, The Sun (1963).

48 C.io8.y.4; A.M.Moorehead, Churchill (lgto).C.109.P.18; W.Blake, Pencil Drawings (1927).C.io8.k.i3; S.Morison, The Typographic Arts(1949).

49 Book Collector, Spring 1967, pp. 29-35.50 C. 109.p.2. R. Ponchon, Fantaisies et morahtes

(Paris, 1935).

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