Remarkable Books - Unusual Bindings

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Armorial bindings were often used to show ownership on the outside of a volume. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, used the bear and ragged staff of the earls of Warwick as an heraldic device and he may have had several books bound with this stamp. Roger Ascham was Latin secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, composing some of her most important documents, and Dudley was a very close friend of the Queen.
The Queen's friends and associates
Ascham, Roger, Apologia Doctissimi viri Rogeri Aschami…, London: Francis Coldock, 1578. [Acc. 4004, From the Library of J. W. Morris, presented by his pupils.]
An unusual binding executed by Remnant & Edmonds in 1846. The first such use of this technique for a bookbinding, where an impression is taken of a steel die using several layers of millboard in a heavy embossing fly-press. Leather is then placed between the shaped millboard and the die in the press to create the deeply embossed covering. The process, patented by Frederick Leake & Co, was originally developed for wall hangings.
An unusual covering for an old favourite
Gray, Thomas, Elegy in a country churchyard, illuminated by Owen Jones, London: Longman & Co, 1846. [Acc. R66/8423. Bookplate of John Warneford Armstrong.]
This book is bound in a Mauchline-ware type of decoration with a colour transfer of Stirling Castle on the front board. At the bottom it notes that the wood came from field of the Battle of Bannockburn, which is just outside Stirling.
Souvenir of national pride
Graham, George Farquhar, The songs of Scotland adapted to their appropriate melodies…, Edinburgh, Wood & Co., [1854-1859], 3 vols bound together. [Acc. 56:224, Anonymous donation.]
Diaries were quite often given a binding that would allow it to expand when additional material was inserted into the book. This type of wrapped binding was quite common and incorporates a small pocket at the front and a pencil in the spine. This diary was inscribed to ‘My Dear Edward’ from Queen Victoria.
A royal gift to celebrate new year
Peacock’s polite repository or pocket companion containing an almanack…, London: Peacock Mansfield & Son, [1852]. [Acc. 49:1468, donated by M. R. Hugh Rayner.]
This back-to-back format splits this book in half and the two titles can be read from either end, with the back board shared between them. Half bound in leather with marbled paper over boards by Alvah Cook, this is an unusual binding for him.
Back to back Twain tales
Twain, Mark, Extract from Captain Stormfield’s visit to heaven and is Shakespeare dead?, Leipzig: Bernard Tauchnitz, 1910. [Acc. R68/8354, Cook Bequest.]
Probably executed by the first owner, a College of Jesuit monks, in 1666, this volume of astrological charts is covered in an old sheet of music on vellum which may have been discarded from the scriptorium.
Waste not, want not - reusing an old manuscript for a binding
Fieschi, Maurizio di, Comitis de Fliso decas de fato, annisque fatalibus…, Frankfurt, Schonwetter, 1665. [Acc. 5448, Presented by Captain F. H. Huth, 1903.]

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