Studies in the History of Bookbinding

The work of G. D. Hobson on the history of bookbinding, in particular English medieval and Renaissance bindings, is well known. His studies on Romanesque English bookbinding marked a pioneer effort to trace the development of the art of binding in early medieval England, and remain the fundamental introduction to the subject. Similarly, his celebrated study of blind-stamped panels in the English Renaissance book-trade has become a classic. The author's interests also extended to French bindings, and his work on Parisian bookbinding in the first quarter of the sixteenth century is of great importance; it is reprinted here with a number of his other studies on Grolier bindings. The collection of these articles in one volume, with an introduction by A.R.A. Hobson, represents not only a valuable introduction to the work of one of the major authorities on English bookbinding, but also a compendium of some of the most outstanding contributions to the subject.

Table of Contents

Preface
Some early binders and binders tools
Trois reliures romanes
Further notes on Romanesque bindings
A newly discovered Romanesque binding
Further notes on the binding of the Haye manuscript
Parisian binding, 1500-1525
Une reliure aux armes d’Henri III à la Bibliothèque Nationale; Zwei Einbände in der Preussischen Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
On a binding in the University Library, Cambridge
The late Dr. Theodor Gottlieb and his “Grolierstudien”; ‘Et amicorum’; Blind- stamped panels in the English booktrade, c. 1485-1555
Bindings of Thomas Wotton
An early seventeenth-century Scottish binding
A seventeenth-century monogram on the bindings of James II.

Text: English, French, German