Produced by Chris Curnow, Jana Srna and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [ Transcriber's Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including any inconsistencies in the original. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. ] [Illustration: Oliver Cromwell Green Levant--inlays of red and black leather. Decorative tooling in gold.] Bib-li-op-e-gis-tic (Pertaining to the art of binding books.--Dibdin) to which is appended a glossary of some terms used in the craft With Illustrations of Bindings Designed and Executed by The Trow Press, New York Bibliopegistic The craft of the bookbinder is older than that of the printer. Quoting from Mr. Brander Matthews: "Perhaps the first bookbinder was the humble workman who collected the baked clay tiles on which the Assyrians wrote their laws; and he was a bookbinder also who prepared a protecting cylinder to guard the scrolls of papyrus on which Vergil, and Horace, and Martial had written their verses." Modern art in bookbinding began in Italy in the fifteenth century. The invention of printing had so multiplied books that the work got out of the hands of the monks, and workmen from other trades were pressed into service, bringing with them their skill in working leather, as well as their tools, and designs which they had previously used to decorate their work. At this time the libraries were shelves, so inclined, as to allow of the books lying on their sides, inviting their decoration. At first the embellishment was suggested or influenced by the work in the volume, and very often there would be found on the cover, repetition of the typographic ornaments used by the printer. [Illustration: Carols V. Gerichtsordnung (1597) Vine colored Levant--inlays of red and green leather. Interlacing bands and decoration tooled in gold.] But with the associations and influence of the other decorative arts, there came the use of interlacing bands, scrolls, and geometric designs, followed by copies of patterns and parts of designs from laces, embroideries, pottery and ironwork of the times. And with the broadening in the ideas of decoration, came the use of inlays of leather of harmonizing colors, and even of precious stones. While the art was developing in Italy, largely under French patronage, it was also beginning to flourish in France, where later it reached its supremacy. So much so that up to the nineteenth century it was "France first and the rest nowhere." In no work more than in binding have the French shown their fine artistic taste, and in the famous collections of the world the choicest specimens are by French binders of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.