An Essay in the History of Gold-Tooled
Bindings by Herbert P. Horne
London 1894
remarkable in the history of bookbinding. His are the first gilt bindings, which are known to have
been specially executed for an individual person, in contradistinction to the bindings executed for
the stationers; La Reliure Commerciale, as MM. Marius Michel name them; a term which would be
more properly restricted to our modern trade-bindings. In no other series of early gilt bindings, is
the same fine, scrupulous, taste constantly brought to bear upon a distinguished manner of
design, which is slowly developed during the course of some thirty years. But the question
remains, in what degree is this fine taste to be attributed to Grolier himself; and in what to the
workman, or workmen, whom he employed? Are these bindings to be considered as the
productions of French, or Italian, art? To speak absolutely upon this point is impossible; and to
surmise upon it is not difficult. The bindings of his Aldine volumes are, without doubt, of Italian
workmanship; having been executed, in every probability, by Venetian binders: and these
appear to have furnished the model, according to which his other bIndings were worked.
Peiresc, who resembles Grolier in his fine taste, and in his love and munificent patronage of the
arts, constantly employed a binder in his own house, as I shall afterwards relate: nor was if
inconsistent with Italian tradition, for a great personage, to retain skilful artificers, to work in his
palace.
John Evelyn, in his Diary, speaks of the artists, who were variously employed in the Uffizi, by
the Duke of Florence; and other instances may be found in such books as Cellini's
Autobiography. In such sort, did Grolier, for so I am inclined to believe, retain In his house an
Italian binder, whose productions were controlled by the same scrupulous taste of the
Treasurer, which we find determining the form of the Aldine edition of Budaeus's treatise. When
Grolier was called to Paris, about the year 1537, it must be concluded, that he carried this
workman, thither with him; if we are to account for the continuity of style, in the design of his
bindings. Transplanted into France, that refinement upon the Italian manner, which
distinguished the productions of this binder, and which is, in the first instance, to be attributed
to the personal taste of Grolier, was presently developed in the way in which it appears upon
his later bindings. In the essential principles of design, the art of this workman remained wholly
Italian; but in this refinement, his productions exhibit a trait, which is peculiarly French. To class
them with the bindings of Francis I. or of Henry II., is certainly uncritical; since they invariably
possess, what the truly French bindings of this age never possessed, that subtle complexure of
qualities, included by Goethe in the term, 'architectonice,' which distinguished the art of Italy, at
this time; as it distinguished the art of Greece, in the times of antiquity.