An Essay in the History of Gold-Tooled
Bindings by Herbert P. Horne
London 1894
sometimes found, as on a copy of the treatise, Divina Proportione, by Luca Paccioli, Venice, 15°9,
exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club [Case F, No.7.]. Occasionally Grolier's arms, az., three
bezants or, in point, with three mullets arg., in chief, occur upon a shield of an Italian character:
and other arms and legends are to be found emblazoned, or written, on the pages of other
volumes. Although the bindings of Grolier are solidly forwarded, they lack that perfection, which
the French binders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave to their work. The tooling,
especially, is executed with great freedom, but slight attention being given to any nicety in the
joints of the fillets and gouges. A celebrated Parisian binder used to show an original Grolier,
beside a copy of its design made by himself, in which he had corrected all the curves of the .
original with a geometrical accuracy, and executed the joints and mitres with absolute precision.
In brief, he had expressed, in his own opinion, the design of Grolier's binder, as that workman
would have expressed it, had he been a perfect master of his art. As an example of technical
skill, this copy was an extraordinary production; but as a work of art, it wanted that vitality,
which comes of the error of the hand in spontaneous expression, and in which the charm of fine
art must largely consist. This freedom of handling in tooling, is like a good manner in painting, or
drawing: and takes us far more than when art Is too precise in every part and not only in art, is
this so, but in Nature herself; a trait which Marcus Aurelius has felicitously touched upon, in one
of the most charming of his meditations, where he says: 'This, also, thou must observe, that
whatsoever it is that naturally doth happen to things natural, hath somewhat in itself that is
pleasing and attractive; as a loaf when it is baked, some parts of it cleave as it were, and part
asunder, and yet those parts of it, though in some sort it be against the art and intention of the
baking itself, that they are thus cleft and parted, they become it well nevertheless and have a
certain property to stir the appetite.' And so, in a fine binding of Grolier's, the free execution,
which is, as it were, against the art and intention of the design itself, is exactly that, which
becomes it, and lends charm to it. Express the same design, which is, in idea, one, entire, and
exact, indeed, almost a geometrical figure; express such a design with an accuracy, equal to the
accuracy of its conception, and the whole charm of it is gone. It is dull and lifeless; little better
than any other book, tooled in the so-called Grolier style, which is now common to every binder's
workshop.