Treasure binding

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Gem-encrusted cover of the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, 870
Saint Remy and the Baptism of Clovis
Typical Limoges enamel cover, c. 1200

A treasure binding or jewelled bookbinding is a luxurious

gospel books designed for the altar and use in church services, rather than study in the library.[1]

The vast majority of these bookbindings were later destroyed as their valuable gold and jewels were removed by looters, or the owners when in need of cash. Others survive without their jewels, and many are either no longer attached to a book, or have been moved to a different book.

Book of Lindisfarne
is not recorded.

In the Eastern Orthodox churches treasure bindings have continued to be produced, mainly for liturgical gospel books, up to the present day, and exist in many artistic styles. Other styles of binding using gems, and typically pearls, have a covering of

books of hours of female royalty, and may also include embroidery
.

Technique and production

The techniques for producing jewelled bookbinding have evolved over the course of history with the technologies and methods used in creating books. During the 4th century of the Christian era, manuscripts on papyrus or vellum scrolls first became flattened and turned into books with cut pages tied together through holes punched in their margins. Beginning in the 5th century, books were sewn together in this manner using leather thongs to make the bind stronger and longer lasting with wooden boards placed on top and bottom to keep the pages flat. These thongs then came to be laced into the boards and covered entirely by leather.[3]

Boards afforded the opportunity for decorative ornamentation, with metal casings set into the wood for the installation of precious gems, stones, and jewels.[4] The cover material would then be laid over the casings by hand and cut around the rim of the casings to reveal the jewels. The books typically bound were gospels and other religious books made for use within the church. In the Middle Ages, the responsibility of creating adorned books went to metalworkers and guilders, not the bookbinders, who worked with sheets of gold, silver, or copper to create jewelled and enamelled panels that were nailed separately into the wooden boards.[5]

Other forms

Metalwork

Qur’an during this time period.[5]

In fashion in the 16th century were "books of golde": small, devotional books adorned with jewelled or enamelled covers worn as a girdle or around the neck like pieces of jewellery by the English court. These pieces can be seen in portraits from the period and records of jewels from the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI.[7]

History

Restored 16th-century binding of velvet embroidered with pearls for Elizabeth I, on a volume of church history

Treasure bindings were a luxury affordable only by wealthy elites, and were commissioned by wealthy private collectors, churches and senior clergy and royalty, and were often commissioned for presentation by or to royal or noble persons.

Byzantine emperors.[9] Especially in the Celtic Christianity of Ireland and Britain, relatively ordinary books that had belonged to monastic saints became treated as relics, and might be rebound with a treasure binding, or placed in a cumdach
.

The gems and gold do not merely create an impression of richness, though that was certainly part of their purpose, but served both to offer a foretaste of the bejewelled nature of the

sacristry
.

Byzantine and Western medieval treasure bindings are often not entirely unified in style. Apart from being completed at different times, and sometimes in different countries, elements were also removed and readapted for other volumes or reset with new pieces as time passed.[11] For example, the covers now on the Lindau Gospels come from different parts of South Germany, with the lower or back cover created in the 8th century (earlier than the book they now adorn) while the upper or front cover was completed in the 9th century; both incorporate gilded metal ornamented with jewels. It is not known when they were first used on this manuscript.[12]

Outside the monasteries, the emerging bookbinders' guilds of the Middle Ages were often restricted by law with quantitative limitations on the application of jewels. Though this did not significantly affect the craft of decorating books, it did mandate the number of jewels allowed depending on the position or rank of the commissioner of the work.

Protestant Reformation, but most bindings survive from Catholic areas that avoided later war and revolutions.[14]

Despite the commoditisation of book production due to the printing press, the artistic tradition of jewelled bookbinding continued in England, though less frequently and often in simpler designs.

Queen Elizabeth I, who favoured velvet bindings. On a visit to the Royal Library in 1598, Paul Hentzner remarked on the books "bound in velvet of different colours, though chiefly red, with clasps of gold and silver; some have pearls, and precious stones, set in their bindings."[16] Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the style evolved to be one using velvet, satin, silk, and canvas in bookbinding decorated less with jewels and more with embroidery, metal threads, pearls, and sequins.[17]

Revival

External videos
video icon Lindau Gospels Cover, Smarthistory[18]

After jewelled bookbinding enjoyed its renaissance, the practice waned until it experienced a revival near the turn of the 20th century in England. Highly influential in the revival of this style were

Titanic in 1912. Today, a third reproduction of this binding is the only one to survive, after the second one, reproduced to Sutcliffe's design by his nephew Stanley Bray, was damaged in the Blitz during World War II. Bray's second attempt at recreating the design, the third version that survives, was placed in the British Library in 1989.[16]

Other binderies creating books in this style during this period were the companies of Rivière and

Zaehnsdorf
. The largest collection of these masterpieces was the Phoebe Boyle one; over 100 jewelled bindings were sold in 1923. Jewelled bindings occasionally appear at auction; literature on them is surprisingly scant given their superb quality.

In 1998, Rob Shepherd of Shepherds Bookbinders bought both Zaehnsdorf and Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Presently, binding with jewels is a rare practice, and binding companies both large and small are finding the art form becoming less viable in today's society.[20] Bindings that exist today are housed in private collections or can be found in libraries and museums across the world.

  • Gospel book cover with Byzantine and Western elements of various medieval periods
    Gospel book cover with Byzantine and Western elements of various medieval periods
  • 10th-century ivory, with kneeling donor bishop, 12th-century gold and enamel, Mosan
    10th-century ivory, with kneeling donor bishop, 12th-century gold and enamel, Mosan
  • The binding of the Mstislav Gospel (Novgorod, 1551) incorporates numerous Byzantine miniatures from the 10th and 11th centuries
    The binding of the
    Novgorod
    , 1551) incorporates numerous Byzantine miniatures from the 10th and 11th centuries
  • The cover of the Vienna Coronation Gospels, used in imperial coronations, was replaced in 1500
    The cover of the Vienna Coronation Gospels, used in imperial coronations, was replaced in 1500
  • Russian gospel book, 1911, gold and enamel
    Russian gospel book, 1911, gold and enamel
  • Armenian gospels, 1262, with metal elements over leather
    Armenian gospels, 1262, with metal elements over leather
  • The library of the Duke of Burgundy about 1480; books with metal elements probably on velvet
    The library of the Duke of Burgundy about 1480; books with metal elements probably on velvet
  • Renaissance miniature manuscript formed as a pendant, Italian, c. 1550
    Renaissance miniature manuscript formed as a pendant, Italian, c. 1550
  • Unusual secular Rococo binding, using techniques from the making of gold boxes, with mother of pearl and hardstone, Berlin, 1750–1760
    Unusual secular
    mother of pearl
    and hardstone, Berlin, 1750–1760
  • 18th-century German clasped treasure binding
    18th-century German clasped treasure binding
  • Gruel and Engelmann, binding for a book of hours, Paris 1870, silver-gilt and enamel on leather
    Gruel and Engelmann, binding for a book of hours, Paris 1870, silver-gilt and enamel on leather
  • Binding for the so-called Stephanus-codex from Weihenstephan, German, 13th century
    Binding for the so-called Stephanus-codex from Weihenstephan, German, 13th century
  • Front cover to psalter of medieval German origin, with treasure binding incorporating both thirteenth and late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century materials
    Front cover to psalter of medieval German origin, with treasure binding incorporating both thirteenth and late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century materials

Notes

  1. ISBN 1606065785, 9781606065785 google books
  2. ^ See for example the Lindau Gospels; as removing and attaching cover plates is relatively easy, moving them between books seems to have been common at all periods. In the last 200 years many art dealers have preferred to treat book and cover as different objects, and have separated them.
  3. ISBN 9780486263076
    .
  4. ISBN 9780486263076
    .
  5. ^ a b Marks, P.J.M. (1998). The British Library Guide to Bookbinding: History and Techniques. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 56.
  6. ^ a b Foot, Miriam M.; Robert C. Akers. "Bookbinding". Oxford Art Online. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  7. ^ Foot, Miriam M. "Bookbinding 1400–1557". Cambridge Histories Online. Cambridge University Press. p. 123. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  8. ^ a b Needham, 21
  9. ^ Diehl, Edith (1980). Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique Vol. 1. New York: Dover Publications. p. 19.
  10. ^ Metz, 26-30
  11. ^ Prideaux, Sarah Teverbian; Edward Gordon Duff (1893). An Historical Sketch of Bookbinding. London: Lawrence and Bullen. pp. 179. An Historical Sketch of Bookbinding.
  12. ^ Needham, 24–29
  13. ^ Diehl, Edith (1980). Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique Vol. 1. New York: Dover Publications. p. 52.
  14. ^ Prideaux, Sarah Teverbian; Edward Gordon Duff (1893). An Historical Sketch of Bookbinding. London: Lawrence and Bullen. pp. 2. An Historical Sketch of Bookbinding.
  15. ^ Davenport, Cyril (1898). Cantor Lectures on Decorative Bookbinding. London: William Trounce. p. 8.
  16. ^ a b Marks, P.J.M. (1998). The British Library Guide to Bookbinding: History and Techniques. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 57.
  17. ^ Marks, P.J.M. (1998). The British Library Guide to Bookbinding: History and Techniques. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 59.
  18. ^ "Lindau Gospels Cover". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
  19. ^ Middleton, Bernard (1996). A History of English Craft Bookbinding Technique (4th ed.). London: The British Library. pp. 125–126.
  20. ^ Severs, John (27 March 2009). "A Model, Modern Artisan". Printweek: 22–23.

References

  • Metz, Peter (trans. Ilse Schrier and Peter Gorge), The Golden Gospels of Echternach, 1957, Frederick A. Praeger, LOC 57-5327
  • Needham, Paul (1979). Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings 400–1600. Pierpont Morgan Library/Oxford University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-192-11580-5
    .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Treasure bindings.

The links listed below can take you to some currently exhibited examples of jewelled bookbinding in museums and galleries.

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