Browse Items (259 total)

The marbling technique for this decorative paper has been achieved with the use of the comb tool. The colours used are also date to the mid-19th century and are not the classic and uniform blues, reds, yellows and whites colours typical of the 18th…

An ex-libris embossed on a leather over was one way of indicating ownership of a book. In this example, however, we do not see a familial coat of arms, as can be seen in image no.8, but the “Quebec Library” choosing to simply spell out its name in…

Bringing to life the adage of “waste not, want not”, this book’s binding is made of parchment that originally was someone’s correspondence. With paper and leather being expensive commodities due to the ever-increasing amount of titles being published…

Elizabeth Flesher was the widow of printer James Flesher (? - 1670), himself son of printer Miles Flesher. The Fleshers, father and son, were most renowned for their printing of Arabic texts, so it would be quite appropriate for this text containing…

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.

This item’s binding is of black morocco (goatskin), one of the many colours that this very fine goatskin leather could be dyed with at the time. Its title appears in gilt on the spine, with gilt double borders on its front and back covers and gilded…

Printed in Merseburg (Germany) in 1753 by Christian Ludwig Forberger, this work displays an outstanding and perhaps mindboggling combination of font sizes and styles, as well as a mixture of red and black lettering, on one title page. (With no proof…

The binding consists of parchment on boards, with the parchment having been painted in brown ink to simulate a marbling effect. The spine label is of yellow morocco, with title tooled in gold (partially illegible due to remnants of a former label…

This leather binding sports a large floral ornament blind-tooled into the centre of each cover, with double borders in gilt. Although printed in Madrid, this item contains the stamp of a bookseller in “Habana”. Is this perhaps a Cuban binding.

Here we see the introduction of gold into the manufacturing process of marbled paper. In this case, it is difficult to say whether this is an example of handmade paper or one produced mechanically given that the date of printing and the fact that the…