Be prepared to be wowed: The Grolier Club in New York City is starting 2024 with an exhibition detailing the history and aesthetics of fine bookbinding. In Judging a Book By Its Cover: Bookbindings From the Collections of The Grolier Club, 1470s–2020, more than 100 historic bindings will be on view. Among the highlights are ornate works such as a silver filigreed and jeweled binding on a miniature 1673 Book of Hours, which features painted enamel portraits of saints and angels ringed by 14 small amethysts on the front and back covers. A 1789 black velvet mourning binding memorializing the papal funeral ceremony of Charles III of Spain. A dedication copy made for his son King Charles IV, featuring gold and silver embroidery, appliqués of his family crest topped with a crown, and silver coins embedded around the border. From the collection of Jean Grolier—for whom the club is named—a dark brown calfskin and gilt embossing in a Cupid’s Bow design. The bindings for Lynd Ward’s picture novels Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts and Madman’s Drum: A Novel in Woodcuts.
May Morris, daughter of William Morris and director of embroidery at Morris & Co., created the circa 1888 floral embroidered binding for the publication Embroidery and Lace: Their Manufacture and History From the Remotest Antiquity to the Present Day by Ernest Lefébure. It boasts bright green ribbed silk and pink flowers with a central arabesque on the cover.
Judging a Book By Its Cover is curated by H. George Fletcher, the former Astor Director for Special Collections at The New York Public Library and former Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at The Morgan Library & Museum. The accompanying catalogue, written and compiled by Fletcher, is available from University of Chicago Press.
“A principal motivation of the founders who brought the Grolier Club into existence was to improve the state of fine bookbinding in America,” said Fletcher. “Their practice had been to send their rare books to France for proper treatment. Exhibiting bookbindings is a practice that continues at the Grolier Club to the present day.”
Kalendario Manual y Guia de Forasteros en Madrid para el Año de MDCCLXXXII. Bound with Estado Militar de España Año de 1782. Madrid: Imprenta Real de la Gazeta, 1782.
The Whole Booke of Psalms. London: Company of Stationers, 1643.
Pope Nicholas I. Letters (Latin). Rome: Francesco Priscianese, 1542.
Gregory the Great. Letters (Latin). Augsburg: Günther Zainer, not after 1476.
Lynd Ward. Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts. New York: Cape & Smith, 1929. Lynd Ward. Madman’s Drum: A Novel in Woodcuts. New York: Cape & Smith, 1930.
Book of Hours, Use of Paris (Latin). Paris: Michaël Dauplet, 1673.
Almanach Royal, Année M. DCC. LVII. Paris: Le Breton, 1757.
Joseph Glanvill. Seasonable Reflections and Discourses in Order to the Conviction, & Cure of the Scoffing, & Infidelity of a Degenerate Age. London: Henry Mortlock, 1676.
Svato Zapletal. Ich bin nur Flamme: Gedichte des Expressionismus. Hamburg: Svato Verlag, 1999.