The Book of Common Prayer ... together with the Psalter

1760

de Beer Eb 1760 C

Cambridge: Printed by John Baskerville, …and B. Dod

The binding of this 18th century Book of Common Prayer is an ‘all-over style’, so named by bibliographer Graham Pollard, where the finishing (the decoration) extends over the entire cover area, with little if any blank space left for anything else. The profuse gold tooling of flowers, birds, dogs, and short fillets (lines) is laid out in a cottage-roof style, where the top and bottom of a centre rectangular panel slope away from a broken centre, producing a gabled effect. Popular in England in the late 17th century, the style continued to be used for almanacs and devotional works. The name ‘M. Pimlowe, 1763’ is pasted on the front marbled endpaper; perhaps he commissioned the binding?