Shelving Books the old-fashioned way

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Book Collecting, chained library, ezra the scribe, fore-edge painting, franceso righetti, libraries, odorico pillone, shelving, spines, thomas brooke, william cartwright

These days we tend to shelf books ‘spine out’ and publishers, conveniently, usually reproduce the title, author and other helpful details on the spine so that we can easily run our eyes along a shelf to find a particular book.  But it wasn’t always thus!

This 17th century painting by Guercino shows the Italian lawyer and one time governor of Cento in northern Italy, Francesco Righetti, at home in his library.  Righetti is surrounded by his law books, speaking to his learning and erudition.  But his books are shelved ‘tail end’ out, with the titles written on the base of the text block.

Portrait of Franceso Righetti by Guercino, 1626-8

Look too at this engraving of the poet William Cartwright (printed in 1651 as a frontispiece to his ‘Poems and Plays’).  Again, he’s in his library and his books can be seen – this time with the fore-edges facing out from the shelves and the spines neatly tucked in against the rear walls and hidden.  This was a common practice in the 16th and 17th centuries. Imagine shelving books with gilded page edges in this way – they would have gleamed and glistened, catching the candlelight, in quite a glorious way.  Some medieval manuscripts and early printed books now in rare book collections have the title and other details written on in several different places, reflecting changes in shelving the preferences of owners and book collectors over time.

William Cartwright and his books, frontispiece from his Poems and Plays (1651)

The Codex Rotundus

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15th century book production, adolf of cleves, book of hours, Book of the Week, codex rotundus, illumination

The manuscripts and codices which survive from the late 15th century are often large and lavish affairs and usually conform to certain norms in terms of shape. But this curious and unusual little gem, which takes its name ‘Codex Rotundus’ from its unique shape, measures just over 9 centimeters across and is circular.  Its 266 pages are bound along a spine just 3cm long, so small that three clasps are needed to help keep it closed.  Thought to have been rebound in the 17th century, the original clasps which help hold the tiny codex together, were reused. As so many of the manuscripts from this period, it is a devotional text -a lavishly illuminated Book of Hours in Latin and French.

Remnants of a coat of arms, which a subsequent owner appears seems to have tried to obliterate, in the first initial ‘D’ suggests that it was created for Adolf of Cleves and Mark (1425-92). Adolf was a wealthy and well-connected aristocrat, the nephew of Philip the Good and cousin to Charles the Bold, successive Dukes of Burgundy.  The clasps are monogrammed and these too link the codex to Adolf: the same stylised decorations appear in another Book of Hours known to have been his and now held by the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore.  Despite the codex’s royal and courtly associations, its size and portability suggest that it was intended for private devotional use, for the owner to carry with him to church or on long journeys away from home.

The Embroidered Book, The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul (1544)

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beautiful books, Bodleian Library, Book Collecting, Bookbinding, elizabeth I, embroidered books, Katherine Parr, Synneful Soul

Embroidered Binding of The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul, 1544

It is common now to associate old and antiquarian books with leather bindings – the cherished patinas and leathery smells, embellished perhaps with armorial motifs or previous owners’ library markings giving a sense of permanence and authenticity.   But it wasn’t until around the time of the Restoration in the latter part of the 17th century that English bookbinders took up the French fashion of working almost exclusively in leather. Until then “English bookbinders had never been content to regard leather as the sole material in they could work”.  Books bound in cloth (binders most commonly used canvas but velvet and satin were also used) and decoratively embellished with embroidery have a long history: there is a embroidered Psalter, now in the British Library collection, which was stitched by one Anne Felbrigge towards the end of the 14th century. Embroidery as means of binding books was especially popular, among those who could afford such luxuries, in the Tudor age.  Silver and gold threats were often used, with the base material perhaps studded with pearls or other jewels, to create an unrivaled decorative effect.

2015 in Review – BookAddiction Blog

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Book Blogging, Book Collecting

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for my BookAddiction blog.  I love my little blog but I think I need to work harder next year – more bookish posts, more reviews (I read loads of books but only review a tiny proportion) and lots more on book collecting as I love doing those posts most and they seem most useful to others too.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,200 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Christmas Gift Books #XmasGiftBook

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christmas, christmas books, gift books, italian boy, lucy worsley, murder, sarah wise, true crime, xmas books

Christmas day is quiet in the BookAddict’s house this year.  For the most wonderful of reasons – the arrival of a healthy, hearty and much loved little boy yesterday, on Christmas Eve, into our circle, our festivities will start tomorrow with Boxing Day, and then our ‘Christmas Day’ on Monday.

That leaves a little time for reading, and blogging, today on Christmas Day and I thought it would be fun to share the books that lovely friends and family have given as presents for Christmas this year.

The Ingoldsby Legends – Mirth and Marvels, 1864, designed by John Leighton. Image credit: British Library

The tradition of giving books and other keepsakes at Christmas has ancient origins but had been largely the preserve of the affluent elite.  Spring used to be the prime time for book production but with technological advances in the early 19th century, printing and books became cheaper and more plentiful and by the 1840s peak time had shifted to October, with publishers and printers rushing out enough gift books, special editions and Christmas reading to assuage the growing demands of the aspiring middle-classes to celebrate Christmas in style.  Authors, too, developed an acute understanding of the potential of the Christmas market.  Charles Dickens wrote Christmas-themed stories for special editions of magazines such as Household Works and All Year Round and in 1843 he published the  perennial Xmas favourite, a Christmas Carol.  Fables, ghost stories and fairy tales were prominent among Victorian Christmas gift books, with new fantasy stories from the likes of Charles Kingsley, Christina Rosetti and Lewis Carroll mixing with retellings of traditional stories and cheap reprints of classic works.