Browse Items (91 total)

EnglishThis collection of poetry from Québec poet, musician and actor Michel Garneau, is printed on loose leaves of paper and illustrated by Maureen Maxwell. All is housed in a leather “case” of a mosaic design, executed by artist Lise Rodrigue. This…

EnglishThis shows us a variation in the rendering of roman numerals. Using a format scholar Paul Lewis calls “deep parenthesis”, an “I” flanked between by both a forward facing C and an upside down, backward facing C, would represent “1000”. And “I”…

EnglishThis is an example of paste paper, most specifically one generated with the “pull “(i.e. “pull-paper”) technique. A mixture of glue and colour pigments are applied with a brush to two sheets of paper that are imposed upon each other. Before…

EnglishThis is a tree-calf binding, with the tree-like appearance produced by pouring acid over the leather and the binding moved in a specific way to generate the desired pattern. Using a method that requires a high degree of mastery, the pattern is…

EnglishLeathers and parchments could be dyed so as to add colour to their external covers; they could also be painted. This third edition of the works of Olympia Morata, humanist, poet and linguist, of Italian origin, is an example of a parchment…

English This first example is that of what is termed an “armorial binding”, where the coat of arms of an aristocratic family will serve to indicate ownership on a book’s binding. Such bindings are executed with exquisite care and a family’s arms are…

English This exquisite example of a mark of ownership is not even that of a book owner but that of a bookseller in Glasgow, Scotland, who had this item for sale in their shop. This practice ensured that this item could be traced back to its original…

EnglishThe design here imitates that of a peacock’s fanned tail. After one has deposited the colours on the thickened solution of water and used the comb to create the first series of designs, one then uses a stylus to refine the design. The marbler…

EnglishA Venetian, Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari (1508-1578), established a bookstore and printing shop in Venice with his father, named “Liberia del Fenice” (the Phoenix bookstore). As we have seen with other printer’s devices, the mark may illustrate…

EnglishThe 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…