English Embroidered Bookbindings The English Bookman's Library

London Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd 1899, 1899. First edition. pp. [xxxi], 113. 52 plates, six in colour. Original publisher's green cloth with title, author's name and publisher stamped in gold on spine, "The English Bookman's Library" stamped in gold on upper cover. Contents are in excellent condition. A lovely, clean, tight copy of this definitive study. Fine "The term 'embroidered bookbinding' usually describes a book bound in textile, decorated with a design made for the book and worked in coloured and metallic threads on both covers. The cloth was embroidered separately before it was glued or stitched to the boards of a ready bound book; embroidered covers do not form part of the binding structure. The majority of embroidered bindings were produced by professional needleworkers". (British Library). Cyril Davenport's book is a "full account of the history of embroidered book-covers in England, and of the different methods of working them Embroidery was applied to books in England as early as the fourteenth century, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries played a great part in English bookbinding, its use in other countries being small". A fascinating subject.