Historical essay on the art of bookbinding/Morocco Leather
OF MOROCCO LEATHER
BINDING.
he Arabs were assuredly the original artistic bookbinders. Copies of their “Moallakât” were covered with various colored morocco, elaborately tooled and stamped in exquisite patterns, long ere the pillagers of the library of the Caliphs at Cairo transformed—horresco referens!—into shoes, the most valuable bindings of that library.The Crusaders brought from Constantinople, Palestine and Egypt many specimens of the admirable bindings in morocco and silken stuffs, which, because of the resemblance of the covers to the gay plumage of a bird’s wing, were called alæ. They were copied by Italian bookbinders, but were not adopted until the sixteenth century. The precious books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were confided to goldsmiths, enamellers and illuminators, as heretofore. We have many details of their workmanship in the inventories of the libraries of Charles VI. of France (1399), of the dukes of Burgundy, and of the dukes of Orleans, of Chaucer’s royal patron Edward III., whose style of binding may be imagined from the following extracts from the archives of the British Museum:
“To Alice Claver, for the making of xvi laces and xvi tasshels for the garnyshing of divers of the King’s books, ijs. viijd.”
“To Piers Bauduyn, Stacioner, for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called Titus Linius, xxs.; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called Ffrossard, xvjs.; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called the Bible, xvjs.; for bynding, gilding and dressing of a booke called le Gouuernement of Kings and Princes, xvjs.”
In the inventory of Charles VI. are missals of silver gilt covers, and of velvet embroidered with the fleur-de-lys, and the arms of France enamelled on the silver clasps. Other bindings were of vellum, silk, or dressed leather, deer skin, fox skin, sheep skin, calf skin, and the lamentable goat skin (whence bouquin), and hog skin, of which the irrepressible book-worm is particularly fond.
Skelton has given a very poetic description of a missal of Henry VIII.:
With that of the boke lozende were the claspes,
The margin was illumined al with golden railes,
And bice empictured with grass-oppes and waspes,
With butterflies, and fresh pecocke tailes,
Englozed with flowers, and slyme snayles,
Envyved pictures well touched and quickely,
It would have made a man hole that had be right sickely,
To behold how it was garnished and bound,
Encovered over with gold and tissue fine,
The clasps and bullions were worth a M pounde,
With belassis and carbuncles the border did shine,
With aurum mosaicum every other line.
Not a satisfactory description in a bibliographical point of view; possibly the work of Edwards, but the “bibliophile Jacob” is of the opinion that it was similar to the bindings which King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary caused to be executed by Italian artists for the Buda library, composed principally of illuminated manuscripts bound in colored morocco, ornamented with silver bosses and clasps, treasures which were destroyed by the Turks under Soliman II., in 1526.
A book-a-bosom, valiant King, Mathias of Hungary, the prince of bibliophiles! but as there are few, if any, specimens extant of the bindings bearing the symbol suggested by the Roman etymon of his name: a crow with a ring in its mouth; his mantle has fallen to Jean Grolier.
