News | January 3, 2024

Seven Centuries of Ornate Decorated Bookbindings at Grolier Club

Grolier Club

Ernest Lefébure. Embroidery and Lace: Their Manufacture and History from the Remotest Antiquity to the Present Day. London: Grevel, 1888. May Morris, the daughter of William Morris and Jane Burden Morris, created this embroidered binding ca. 1888. The boards are covered in bright green ribbed silk, worked in a continuous pattern across the covers and spine of floral and leafy sprays with gold and silver bullion. It is signed ".m." at the foot of the spine.

The Grolier Club starts the new year with an exhibition detailing the history and aesthetics of fine bookbindings. Judging a Book by Its Cover: Bookbindings from the Collections of The Grolier Club, 1470s-2020 highlights selections from seven centuries of the Grolier Club’s collection of bindings, largely donated and built by the Club’s members over the course of its 140-year history.

On view in the Grolier Club’s ground floor gallery from January 17 through April 13, 2024, the exhibition explores the history of decorated bindings, book bindings as 3D art objects, what makes a binding collectible, and the Club’s investment in commissioning fine bindings through the present day.

More than 100 historic and fine bindings will be on view, ranging from the oldest in the collection, a ca. 1473 pigskin binding with etched brass cornerpieces and central boss on a volume of the works Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War and Ecclesiastical History, to one of the newest bindings, a 2019 free-drawn gilded design in a polychrome palette by Ulrich Widmann, inspired by the text and illustrations in the work Ich bin nur Flamme: Gedichte des Expressionismus by Svato Zapletal.

Judging a Book by Its Cover is curated by Grolier Club member H. George Fletcher, the former Astor Director for Special Collections at The New York Public Library and former Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at The Morgan Library & Museum. The accompanying catalogue, written and compiled by Fletcher, is available from University of Chicago Press in January 2024.

“A principal motivation of the Founders who brought the Grolier Club into existence was to improve the state of fine bookbinding in America,” said Fletcher. “Their practice had been to send their rare books to France for proper treatment, accepting the vagaries of transatlantic shipment as a necessary risk. The development of The Club Bindery and regularly exhibiting bookbindings is a practice that continues at the Grolier Club to the present day.”

Grolier Club

Book of Hours, Use of Paris (Latin). Paris: Michaël Dauplet, 1673. This miniature is bound in silver filigree over boards covered in rose-colored silk, the filigree covers decorated with enamel portraits of saints and angels, adorned with 14 amethysts. Dauplet may be responsible for the filigree binding, recently identified on no fewer
than a dozen examples, on books dated between the 1670s and the 1690s, all with
Parisian imprints.

Grolier Club

Hispaniarum Regis Catholici oratio habita in sacello pontificio. Parma: Giambattista Bodoni, 1789. This dedication copy for King Charles IV of Spain records the funeral obsequies held in the papal chapel for his father, Charles III. It is bound in black velvet, dramatically embroidered with the son’s armorials and decorated with silver coins in the Antique style, with many other elements. It is Roman work, most likely the work of a congregation of nuns. Embroidered mourning bindings are exceedingly rare.

Grolier Club

Josephus. Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War (Latin). Augsburg: Johann Schüssler, 1470. Bound with Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History (Latin manuscript). Füssen, 1462. Pigskin binding tooled in blind with brass catches & clasps, central bosses & corner
pieces, ca. 1473, for the Benedictine monastery of St. Magnus at Füssen im Algäu, Bavaria. The binding may be the work of Johann Schüssler, who sold his five printing presses in 1473 to become a bookbinder.

Grolier Club

Svato Zapletal. Ich bin nur Flamme: Gedichte des Expressionismus. Hamburg: Svato Verlag, 1999. The author’s linoleum-cut illustrations in the book inspired the artist-bookbinder Ulrich Widmann to create this allusive binding at his studio in Freiburg im Breisgau in 2019. It is dyed and painted in a free-form, self-contained polychrome design over gilt cuir-ciselé calf.

Other highlights include:

* a silver filigreed and jeweled binding on a miniature 1673 Book of Hours which features painted enamel portraits of saints and angels ringed by 14 small amethysts on the front and back covers

* a 1789 black velvet mourning binding adorning a publication memorializing the papal funeral ceremony of Charles III of Spain. The dedication copy made for his son King Charles IV features gold and silver embroidery, appliqués of his family crest topped with a crown, and silver coins embedded around the borders.

* the 1547-1555 binding for a book from the collection of Jean Grolier - the renowned bibliophile after whom the Club is named - which features dark brown calfskin and gilt embossing in a Cupid’s Bow design

* a London Restoration period binding, ca. 1676 featuring elaborate gilt floral designs on black goatskin, including curving vines, sunflowers, tulips, pomegranates, and large cabbage roses, as well as a distinctive bird that Fletcher calls “The Reluctant Falcon”

* May Morris, daughter of William Morris and director of embroidery at Morris & Co., created the ca. 1888 floral embroidered binding for the publication Embroidery and Lace: Their Manufacture and History from the Remotest Antiquity to the Present Day by Ernest Lefébure. Featuring bright green ribbed silk and pink flowers, with a central arabesque on the cover, Morris signed the spine “.m.” at the bottom right corner.

The Grolier Club will host related free public programs including lunchtime exhibition tours on January 18, January 25, February 8, February 29, March 14, and April 3, all 1pm-2pm. A lecture during Bibliography Week will be held on January 24, at 2.30pm, and a virtual tour and Curator Q&A will take place on April 9 at 6pm. More details at http://grolierclub.eventbrite.com.