Browse Items (259 total)

This speckled calf binding is created using a technique of depositing fine drops of acid on the binding’s leather to achieve the visual effect. A late 19th or early 20th century rebinding, this binding is executed in the “Cambridge” style. Very…

This work, published in Barcelona at the end of the 16th century, has two 20th century ex-libris labels affixed to its interior cover. These two ex-libris are associated with the same owner, namely Isodoro Fernandez, a Spanish collector and…

Sebastian Gryphius (1492-1556) was a German printer (born Greif, in Reutlingen), although he would establish himself in Lyon, France for the bulk of his career. Chiefly printing the works of classical Latin authors, Gyphius published the works of…

William Morris (1834-1896), product of an upper-middle class upbringing of the 19th century, was actually a socialist with a great reverence for the skilled craftsman whose output was a product of labour done by hand, rather than that of…

Classical texts, authors and classical languages formed the majority of texts printed in the early days of printing. While this item is not as old as its counterparts in the Collection, it does display, very richly, the elaborate Greek fonts that…

This title by Bounhours demonstrates the reuse of the materials by bookbinders. In this particular case, a very refined and aesthetically pleasing handwriting adds to the charm of this “recycled” bookbinding. The hand is unknown; does it stem from an…

The title page displays the printer’s device of Sébastian Nivelle (1523-1603). Nivelle was active in Paris from the mid-1500s to 1603, and was at least approaching 80 years of age at the time of his passing, making him the literal “old man” in the…

We see here not one but two ex-libris on the front endpaper. The second owner (or another person entirely) has scraped out the name of his predecessor, which was located below a coat of arms surrounded by the following motto: “Mallem Mori Quam…

Published by Fleury Mesplet (1734-1794), this physically tiny work would be the first work printed by Mesplet after his arrival in Montréal in 1776. After leaving Lyon for Avignon, London and Philadelphia, Mesplet settled in Montréal on the…

In this work and in others, we see very fine lines in red that delineate different spaces on the page for the printed text. This work carries over the medieval practice used by manuscript copyists, that is, the ruling of spaces in the text in…