Cambridge Bookbindings : A simple gilt-tooled presentation binding, ca.1617

Collins, Samuel 1576-1651

Cambridge Bookbindings

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>New sets of tools, and design ideas, came into Cambridge bookbinding in the early decades of the seventeenth century. To some extent these were following conventions which were evolving elsewhere, with large single centrepiece stamps giving way to central patterns made up of smaller tools, but better quality Cambridge work of this time displayed a distinctive style and elegance which helps to explain John Bagford’s remark, at the end of the century, that Cambridge (along with London and Eton) was one of our “places that have been famous for binding”. The bindery of Henry Moody (1575-1637), known to have been in the trade in Cambridge from at least 1600, was one of the leading ones which produced much of this work, but it was not the only one. This is a relatively simple manifestation of their gilt-tooled output, bound for presentation in 1617, the year of publication.</p><p>Pasteboards, covered with dark brown calfskin, gilt- and silver-tooled (the silver now oxidised), with red paint at the centres. Smooth spine, with recessed supports, gilt-tooled; red sprinkled leaf edges; remains of green cloth ties; plain paper pastedowns and flyleaves.</p><p>Dr David Pearson</p></p>