Constantini Hugenii Equitis Otiorum Libri Sex

1641

Shoults La 1641 H

[Haarlem: Hans Passchiers van Wesbusch]

Whether books are large or small, the effort in binding remains the same: collating the sections, sewing the sections together, trimming the edges, rounding and backing the spine, and wrapping the text block with a cover of some sort. Here two plain, functional vellum bindings are contrasted with an ornate red morocco binding on a 1697 Italian edition of the Office of the Church. Only the stubs of the fore-edge ties remain on the Elzevier edition (1634), which has a limp vellum cover. The vellum on the ‘landscape’ Huygens (1641) is rigid, wrapped over pasteboard. Both books have vellum cords stabbed through the outer cover; this practice giving greater strength to the binding.