Now it cannot be denied that most books today are smaller than the great manuscript tomes of the monastic scholars. They are cheaper, too. But it would be wrong to say that all books bound since Johann Gutenberg’s day have been ugly. To be sure, introduction of the printing press increased the flow of work to the bindery. But if the binder could no longer lavish time and care on every volume, he could still devote high artistry to an occasional book, steady craftsmanship to all. Innumerable examples from the hands of many binders since the fifteenth century attest that the cover of a printed book can be as beautiful as that of a manuscript book. The names of Nicholas Eve, Clovis Eve, “Le Gascon” (otherwise unknown), and Geoffrey Tory of sixteenth-century France, and Padeloup and Le Monnier in the eighteenth century, deserve mention. In England bindings are not as easily identified with their binders, but the names of Thomas Berthelet, royal binder to Henry VIII, and above all Samuel Mearne, binder to Charles II, stand out. Roger Payne was England’s most distinguished binder in the eighteenth century. Before the fifteenth century, European binders usually had worked ornamentation into leather “in blind,” that is, without gold leaf. The technique of applying gold seems to have been perfected by Islamic leatherworkers of Mediterranean Africa, and brought from Morocco to Europe via Spain and Italy. Sixteenth-century French binders carried this kind of adornment to a peak of intricate tooling and lavish gilding. Their English counterparts, while they imitated the French, tended to favor simpler designs and less gold leaf. In the late seventeenth century and continuing through the eighteenth, straight lines rather than curves became characteristic of English work. For example, the broken lines of the “cottage” style credited to Samuel Mearne resembled an outlined roof and walls. Later the “Cambridge” style became popular in England. It consisted of a vertical panel of thin lines (fillets) on the sides of the book, with flower or leaf ornaments (fleurons) at the corners and perhaps in the center, and a narrow lace border around the boards. The example illustrated indicates that colonial binders continued to favor the Cambridge design until well into the eighteenth century. [Illustration: _Left, “cottage” style decoration on a 1674 Bible, bound in the shop of Samuel Mearne of London. Right, “Cambridge” style binding on a copy of _Muscipula_ printed in 1728 by William Parks in Annapolis and bound by him._]