Bookbinding in Early America. Seven Essays on Masters and Methods

4to (27.5 cm), xxiv, [2], 230 pp. Original red cloth, gilt diamond device stamped to upper board, gilt-lettered spine. A collection of seven essays by the pioneering historian of American bookbinding Hannah D. French, bringing together both previously published and unpublished work resulting from more than four decades of research and following her landmark 1941 essay, "Early American Bookbinding by Hand." The essays, arranged in chronological order, examine the work of five American binders --Andrew Barclay, Henry B. Legge, Caleb Buglass, John Roulstone, and Frederick August Mayo -- together with studies of Scottish-American binding styles and the use of full-gilt and extra-gilt decoration between 1660 and 1820. The final and most substantial essay, devoted to Frederick August Mayo, Thomas Jefferson's last bookbinder, was five years in preparation and draws extensively on the Jefferson-Mayo correspondence to document approximately forty-five bindings executed for Jefferson. Each of the five essays on individual binders is accompanied by a tool catalogue prepared by Willman Spawn, conservator at the American Philosophical Society, using rubbing-comparison techniques developed through his longstanding collaboration with French. The volume draws extensively on the Papantonio Collection of American bookbindings, bequeathed to the American Antiquarian Society in 1978 and comprising nearly 700 examples, which provided the principal evidentiary basis for the studies. A foundational reference for the study of American hand bookbinding, combining detailed scholarship on individual binders and workshops with systematic tool identification and documentary evidence. Essential for collectors and scholars of American bindings of the colonial and early Federal periods.…