A Catalogue of English and Foreign Bookbindings Offered for Sale
by Bernard Quaritch, Ltd. (11 Grafton Street, 32s.), is an attractive and valuable contribution to the study of the binder's art, for it contains seventy excellent plates—six of them in colours—illustrating nearly a third of the 329 volumes described in the work. We notice among the books three from Grolier's library, several from the library of Charles the First, a number of the embroidered bindings of the Early Stuart period, an unusually charming example of Roger Payne's more fanciful style, and some specimens of the superb workmanship of Samuel Mearne, notably a Prayer-book bound for Queen Anne. A rare and imposing mediaeval binding, in gilt copper with panels of cloisonné enamel and ivory figures, is reproduced in the coloured frontispiece ; it is assigned to the twelfth century.
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