These different styles of binding continued in vogue side by side until the introduction of typography, when the Venetians introduced morocco from the East and found out the virtues of calf. Books now became bound in oak boards covered with these leathers or in thick parchment or pig skin, old manuscripts often being cut up and of course destroyed for the purpose: boards, clasps, and bosses became obsolete, while silken embroidery maintained a precarious existence, dependent solely on the spasmodic efforts of accomplished amateurs whose tastes and inclinations were swayed by fashion. Finally, parchment disappeared and leather bindings held universal sway, and have so maintained it to our own time, though the English cloth-bound book is now employed whenever expense is an object. Such is a short history of the development of the art of bookbinding, as necessary to be understood and remembered as any other branch of our subject. Some of the better-known and more valuable descriptions of ornamental bindings, whether Italian, French, or English, derive their entire importance by reason of their having come from the libraries of noted collectors, who bound their books after a model pattern. Many of these specimens are of the greatest rarity and often of great value. As works of art, too, they are frequently far superior to anything that can be, or at any rate is, produced at the present day. A really well bound book by Le Gascon, or one of the Eves, for example, is a beautiful object. The covers, of the choicest calf or morocco, are tooled in patterns, _i.e._, hand engraved, in gold; the edges are of gilt, _gauffre_, that is to say, designs are impressed on them also; the whole is a splendid specimen of bibliopegistic skill. Such artists as these disdained blind tooling, where the patterns are worked out and left without their meed of gold. Half-bound volumes with their back and corners of leather and their sides of vulgar paper or boards they were either ignorant of or despised. All this excellence of course cost money, which then, as now, was in the hands of the few, and it must not for a moment be supposed that examples of high-class binding were at all common even during the era in which they were produced. They are scarcer now, for time and fire have claimed their share of spoil, but it was only the great collectors of almost unlimited means, popes, kings, and cardinals, and their favourites, who could afford at any time to furnish a library where beautiful bindings predominated. These collections have for the most part been dispersed over the world, and an amateur of the true old-fashioned type will not allow himself to be looked upon as fortunate, if his shelves do not contain one or two examples at least from the magnificent libraries of brother amateurs long since passed away.