Book History, Education, Learning & Printing / Bindings

[BINDING - EMBROIDERED]. Esercizio da premettersi dalle donne in stato di gravidanza per conseguire da dio per l'intercessione del glorioso San Torello protettore insigne l'essenzione da tutti i pericoli e felicità nel prossimo parto.
Florence, Stamperià Arcivescovile alla Croce Rossa, 1822. 8vo. Beautifully embroidered contemporary pink silk over paperboards, with flowers and a border along the edges of both sides, and the initials "CM" in centre of front cover, preserved in a modern marbled slipcase. 39 pp. Full description

[BINDING]. [GHELARDI SCOLOPI, Orazio Antonio]. La pace tra la virtu', la gloria, ed amore. Componimento drammatico da cantarsi in occasione delle faustissime nozze del nobil uomo signor Silvestro Michele Arnolfini con la nobil donzella signora Beatrice Luisa Bernardini dedicato alla medesima.
Lucca, Giuseppe Rocchi, 1767. Small 4to (17 x 14 cm). Contemporary red velvet, embroidered with silver and gold thread and white and yellow silk (each board with an emblematic image: a crowned mirror[?] showing a hand planting a flag, perhaps intended as the groom's hand on the front and the bride's hand on the back), sewn without supports through 3 holes, brocade paper endpapers (grape vines and large flowers, white on a copper background), green silk ribbon marker. 24 pp. Full description

[BINDING - SILVER]. [Pair of embossed silver book covers, with two engraved silver clasps].
[Netherlands?, ca. 1725?]. Pair of embossed silver book covers (34 x 25 x 3 cm); each cover with a large scrollwork cartouche surrounded by extensive vine and flower decorations and with medallion portraits in each of the four corners, the front showing the crucifixion flanked by Mary and St. John (with an "INRI" scroll above, flanked by a crescent moon and a sun, and a skull and crossbones below), with portraits of four saints, each with a blank scroll (above left bearded with a regal crown; above right clean-shaven with a round-topped mitre; below left and right bare-headed and bearded), the back showing the resurrection with an angel and two astonished guards, with portraits of the four Evangelists. Full description

BOCKENBERG, Pieter Cornelisz. Catalogus & brevis historia pontificum Ultraiectensium. Item catalogus & brevis historia antistitum Egmondanorum.
Leiden, Jan Jacobsz. Paets, 1586 (Colophon: 'Extant Goudae, apud Leonardum Theodori Librarium, ad pontem Hornensem'). Small 8vo. [16], 99, [12] [1 blank] pp. Full description

[BOOK OF HOURS]. Hore [= Horae beate Marie Virginis] secundum usum Romanum ad longum.
(colophon: Paris, Thomas Kees), [ca. 1511, with an almanac for the years 1511-1530]. 8vo (18 x 12 cm). Printed on vellum in red and black throughout, with illustrations printed from (mostly metal?) relief blocks: 17 nearly full-page plus 1 repeat, 27 small plus 2 repeats in the text, many additional small in the decorated border pieces that surround nearly every page. Dark brown gold- and blind-tooled goatskin morocco (ca. 1870?), signed "HARDY-MENNIL" in the foot of the front turn-in. [216] pp. Full description

[BOOK-SHAPED BOX - QUEEN ANNE]. [Gold and tortoise shell book-shaped box made for Queen Anne of Great Britain].
[Portugal?], [ca. 1702?]. Ca. 15.5 x 12 x 5.5 cm.
Early 18th-century, possibly Portuguese, tortoise shell box, with elaborate gold filigree rococo decorations: birds and foliage within a floral frame on the front and back "boards" with gold filigree decorated fastenings around the "fore edge", complete with: 2 catch plates, 2 anchor plates and 2 clasps. The "spine" is divided into 4 compartments, separated by gold filigree decorative horizontal strips, with a gold engraved plaque in the 2nd compartment reading in a banner "BY ME KINGS REIGNE" and below "ANNE [a crown] REGINA" and a filigree basket of flowers in the 1st, 3rd and 4th compartments. The edges are embossed and covered in fine gold foil. The inside of the box is covered in red velvet and the front "board" is, once the box is open, connected to the outer corners of the "fore edge" by fine gold chains. Full description

[BOTTLE IN BOOK FORM]. Esprit de Francklin ... Le B[on].homme Richard.
Chalonnes sur Loire, Fremy frères, Bottrel et Cie., [ca. 1830]. Blown glass bottle made in the form of a book (15 x 10 x 3 cm plus 1.5 cm neck and lip). The "spine" is covered with gold-tooled red morocco, with 7 horizontal rolls dividing it into 5 fields plus a smaller 6th at the foot, the title and the French form of Franklin's pen-name in fields 3 and 4 and a decoration in fields 1, 3 and 5, the "boards" covered with paper, each with an lithographed rectangular decorative border enclosing an oval laurel wreath around an oval paper overlay with a lithographed view, that on the front board showing Benjamin Franklin and that on the back board showing a man in the distillery, each with accompanying texts above and below the wreath. The paper sides (but not their overlays) have a slight reddish cast. Full description

[BOUHOURS, Dominique]. Les entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugene. Dernière edition. ... Sur la copie imprimée à Paris.
Amsterdam, "Jaques le Jeune" [= Daniel Elzevier], 1671. 12mo. With an engraved frontispiece, woodcut publisher's device (armillary sphere) on title-page and 2 woodcut decorated initials. Polished gold-tooled red goatskin morocco (ca. 1840?), each board in a panel design. A pencil note on an endleaf attributes the binding to "Muller" on grounds unknown to us, but he was active from 1834, which accords well with the date of the present binding. [8], 438, [9], [1 blank] pp. Full description

BÜNTING, Heinrich and Matthias HASAERT. Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, das ist Ein Reisebuch uber die gantze Heilige Schrifft ...
Including:
[BÜNTING, Heinrich]. Itinerarium Novi Testamenti. Das ist: Ein Reisebuch over das Newe Testament.
BÜNTING, Heinrich. De monetis et mensuris sacrae scripturae. Dass ist: Ein eigentliche ausrechnung und beschreibung aller Müntz und Masse in heiliger Schrift. ...
Magdeburg, Paul Donat for Ambrosius Kirchner, 1585. With 3 title-pages, 7 double-page and 2 full-page woodcut maps
With: (2) BÜNTING, Heinrich. Braunschweigische und Luneburgische Chronica.
Including:
Das ander Theil Braunschweigischen Chronica, gehet auff das Land Lüneburg
Das dritte Theil, der Braunschweigischen und Lüneburgischen Chronica, ...
Das vierte Theil dieses Buches, gehet insonderheit auff das Fürstenthumb Grubenhagen, füret ... den geburts Stam des fürstlichen Hauses Braunschweig und Lüneburg.
Magdeburg, Paul Donat for Ambrosius Kirchner, 1584-1585. General title-page in red and black with the woodcut coat of arms of Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, further with numerous finely detailed woodcut illustrations
2 works in 3 and 4 volumes, bound as 1. Folio. Contemporary, richly blind-tooled pigskin, possibly by Nikolaus Müller in Wittenberg. With a matching pair of panel stamps in the central fields: portraits of Martin Luther (front board, 83 x 44 mm) and Phillip Melanchthon (back board, 81 x 45 mm), each with the date 1556 and text below. Ad 1: [16], “141” [= 242], [18]; [6], 110, [9] [3 blank]; [6], “34” [= 33], [1 blank] pp.; ad 2: [14], “150” [= 151], [1 blank]; “46” [= 47]. [1 blank]; [1], 47-82, [1 blank]; [1], “82”-“113” [= 83-109] ll. Full description

BUTTURA, Antonio. Sonetti a Bonaparte.
Paris, Pierre Didot laîné, An VIII [after Floréal, so 1800]. 8vo. Finely printed on vellum. Contemporary long-grained and gold-tooled red goatskin morocco, each board with a frame made from a decorated roll with palm leaves between 2 fine-line fillets, the smooth spine with the title in the 2nd of 6 fields, an acorn with leaves in each of the others, gold-tooled board edges and turn-ins, light green watered silk endleaves. [2 blank], [1], [1 blank], [8], [4 blank] pp. Full description