Browse Items (91 total)

English The binding seen here is characteristic of the style of leather bindings where the calf leather is manipulated to give it texture. In this example, the leather is stained with drops of diluted acid to give the binding a mottled look. There…

English This is a typical example of the decoration of binding using the technique of gilding. While generally ornamental decorations were applied by means of gilding irons and rolls onto the spine, here we have a something of a portrait, a…

English This is likely a 20th century rebinding of a work stemming from 500 years earlier. This binding most likely dates to the first half of the 20th century and is stamped “e stato rilegato da Campari e De Marco, Modena”: the book has been bound…

English The binding of this work has been elaborately blind-stamped with a number of decorative tools. Note the manuscript waste visible at the top of the spine; again, materials were reused wherever possible to add in the binding process, especially…

English Here we see the remnants of the leather straps that would have served to keep the book closed. More often than not, these fragile closures have not stood the test of time Français On voit ici un reste d’attaches qui servaient à fermer le…

English This book is a post incunabula and was printed in 1512. It shows with more abundance, almost exaggeration, the use of printed ornamental initials of different sizes and formats. Français Cette page montre une utilisation abondante, voir…

EnglishThis shows us a variation in the rendering of roman numerals. Using a format scholar Paul Lewis calls “deep parenthesis”, an “I” flanked between by both a forward facing C and an upside down, backward facing C, would represent “1000”. And “I”…

EnglishThe printer’s device of Nicolo Pezzana (162?-170?) recalls that of the Giunta printers where Pezzana carried out part of his apprenticeship in Venice and which he ended in 1657. Without an inscription or personalized device, this mark depicts…

EnglishVisible is the printer’s mark of printer and bookseller François l’Honoré (1673?-1748?), originally from the town of Sedan, Alsace. Initially basing himself in Den Haag where he collaborated with Etienne Foulque, he subsequently set up a…

EnglishThis image displays yet another example of a register of signatures, with the colophon appearing just be- low. Here we see the beauty and finesse of printed text as realised by Aldus Manutius, The italic font, the spacing of characters and the…