Worth’s Copy
Worth’s decision to subscribe to Marsili’s Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus reflected both his interest in the scientific subject matter and his desire to be publicly associated with such an ambitious work. His decision to have it bound in a deluxe early eighteenth-century binding was likewise for two reasons: first, it was an immediate necessity to have the six-volume set bound to make sure that the many plates in the costly purchase would be neither damaged or lost; and, secondly, the choice of a fine gold-tooled binding was a recognition of the importance of the work. Evidently Worth intended for his Danube set to be on display and a fine binding would reflect not only on the status of the work but also that of its owner!
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), iv, front cover.
Worth clearly spared no expense for he had the six volumes bound in gold-tooled red goat, in a highly decorative style. While many of the bindings of the ‘Worth Bindery’ (an early eighteenth-century Dublin bindery named after him because the most exemplars of the style are found in his collection), were heavily tooled on their spines, the majority of books associated with the ‘Worth Bindery’ had covers which were solely decorated with a border made up of rolls, with hardly any central tooling. Here, by comparison, we see a central lozenge and an ornate border without any tooling in the angles, a style reminiscent of the ‘Harleian’ style, which was named after Robert Harley (1661-1724), 1st earl of Oxford, and, his son Edward Harley (1689-1741), 2nd earl of Oxford, who evidently liked to have their books bound in pink/red goat, with a sumptuous gold-tooled border and striking central lozenges made up of a mass of tools.[1] They were very expensive bindings – as Nixon suggests, Edward Harley’s predilection for such costly bindings may have resulted in his later financial problems.[2]
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), iv, front cover (detail).
There are clues, however, that we are looking at an Irish variation on the theme, and they may be found in the ornate border, which includes a wave motif. Craig noted that ‘wave borders are found both in England and in Ireland, especially in the first half of the century’ and he divided them in the following manner: wave borders which included an object with a square base he deemed to be definitely Irish, those with a circular base he considered definitely English, and those with a semi-circular base could be either English or Irish.[3] The above border falls into the third category (i.e. it has a semi-circular base), so theoretically it could be either English or Irish but luckily it provides another clue – a bird tool in the wave motif which, though it too may be found on early eighteenth-century English bindings, was more commonly found on Irish bindings.
The bird and wave motif was particularly championed by the famous ‘Parliamentary Binder A’ whose work came to fruition in the 1730s and 1740s.[4] Though Vincent Kinane reminds us that ‘the developmental stage of Parliamentary Binder A’s artistry’ may be found on bindings in the Worth Library dating to the mid-1720s it seems unlikely that Parliamentary Binder A was responsible for the binding on Worth’s Danube set since his bird and wave motif differed substantially.[5] An example of Parliamentary Binder A’s bird and wave may be seen on a 1747 Dublin edition of Sallust’s Opera, and it is clearly quite a different bird, and, moreover, one which does not hold a branch in its mouth (as in Worth’s bindings).[6] In addition, as Craig pointed out, Parliamentary Binder A’s wave and bird border first appeared in 1743, some ten years after Worth’s death.[7] It seems unlikely, therefore, that we are dealing with an early example of the latter’s work.
A much closer contender is the bird tool used by the ‘Irish Dove Binder’, which may be found on Trinity College Dublin’s copy of William Stephens’ Dolaeus upon Gout (London and Dublin, 1732).[8] Here we see a very similar bird, holding a twig in its mouth (presumably meant to represent a dove and olive branch), and, interestingly, Joseph McDonnell has identified the use of Worth Bindery rolls on the same binding.[9] The book was presented by William Stephens (d. 1760), who in 1733 became Lecturer in Chemistry at Trinity and who was later a Trustee of Dr Steevens’ Hospital. Elements within the wave also look very similar to those on Worth’s Danube set but there are subtle differences, not least the fact the fleur-de-lis on top of the wave on Stephen’s Dolaeus upon Gout has a dot on either side – which is missing in Worth’s Danube version, and, more critically, the stem of the olive branch is not exactly the same as that on Worth’s bindings.
Another Irish contender is the famous Dublin binder Joseph Leathley (d. 1757), who bound many items for Trinity College Dublin and some items for Worth.[10] Leathley favoured a number of versions of the bird and wave motif. One, found on a 1745 Dublin edition of Horace’s Opera at Trinity College Dublin, had nothing in its mouth, while another, though it held a twig in its mouth, was clearly a different tool.[11] His slightly earlier version, found on a two-volume set of a London 1733-37 edition of Horace’s Opera, bears some striking similarities to the Danube ‘dove’ – albeit the legs of the Leathley dove are more defined and the olive branch tapers in a slightly different manner.[12] Clearly the device was a popular one in early eighteenth-century Dublin.
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), i-vi, spines.
Another tool, called a ‘mirror’ tool, may be seen on the spine compartments of Worth’s Danube set, and, as Julie Gardham notes, it too was favoured by eighteenth-century Irish binders.[13] Leathley seems to have been especially fond of it for it crops up again and again in the angles and lozenges of a number of his gold-tooled bindings on mid-eighteenth-century Dublin publications: see, for example the angles of three copies of Q. Horatius Flaccus’ Opera, which had been edited by John Hawkey (1703-59) and printed at Dublin in 1745.[14] It was used in the central lozenges of another 1745 copy of Hawkey’s edition of Horace’s Opera and a 1747 Dublin edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost.[15] It was clearly a favourite tool of Leathley’s for he used it repeatedly in the lozenge of yet another copy Horace’s Opera.[16] Likewise, it appears in the angles of a copy of Hawkey’s 1745 edition of P. Virgilius Maro’s Opera, and in those of a large paper copy of the 1750 Dublin edition of Marcus Hieronymus Vida’s Scacchia Ludus: A Poem on the Game of Chess (which had been translated into English by Samuel Pullen/Pullein (1713-84)).[17] Leathley used it both in the angles and in the central lozenge of a copy of Hawkey’s 1745 Dublin edition of P. Terentius Afer’s Comoediae and again, five years later, on the covers of Michael Clancy’s Memoirs, which was printed by Samuel Powell (1707-75) at Dublin in 1750.[18]
It is certainly tempting to attribute the binding of the Danube set to Joseph Leathley, given that he had variations of both the bird and wave and mirror tool, and certainly stylistically the volumes fit into his oeuvre. There are, however, two caveats, which, though they don’t discount the attribution, should give us pause: all the above examples of Leathley’s use of the ‘mirror’ tool date from the period 1745-50, long after Worth’s death; secondly, he was not the only one to use a version of it: for this tool, like that of the bird and wave, was used by other binders, including Parliamentary Binder A, and the College Binder.[19] Indeed, it had a long life for examples of its use have been identified by Craig on a publication as late as 1776.[20] One thing is sure: stylistically we are dealing with an early eighteenth-century Irish binding. Given the importance of making sure that none of the expensive plates went missing, it is likely that Worth, who, as a subscriber, was due to receive his final volumes 15 months after his subscription (and therefore probably received them c. 1727/8), most likely had them bound as soon as he got them.
TEXT: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library.
SOURCES
Craig, Maurice, ‘Eighteenth-Century Irish Bookbindings’, The Burlington Magazine, 94, no. 590 (1952), 132-6.
Craig, Maurice, ‘The Irish Parliamentary Bindings’, The Book Collector, 2 (1953), 24-38.
Craig, Maurice, Irish bookbindings 1600-1800 (London, 1954).
Craig, Maurice, Irish Bookbindings; The Irish Heritage Series 6, (1976), 1–25.
Gardham, Julie, ‘British Bookbinding: 16th to 19th Century: An exhibition originally held in the Hunterian Library, University of Glasgow in December 1970’.
Kinnane, Vincent, ‘The ‘Dark and Delicate Style’ of Parliamentary Binder A: A group of Bindings in the Worth Library, Dublin’, The Book Collector, 48, no. 3 (1999), 372-86.
McDonnell, Joseph and Patrick Healy, Gold-tooled bookbindings commissioned by Trinity College Dublin in the eighteenth century (Leixlip, 1987).
McDonnell, Joseph, Five hundred years of the art of the book in Ireland, 1500 to the present (Dublin, 1997).
Maddock, Philip et al., Exquisite and rare: Bookbindings from the library of Benjamin Guinness, 3rd Earl of Iveagh (Dublin, 2013).
Nixon, Howard M., ‘Harleian bindings’, in Studies in the Book Trade in honour of Graham Pollard, OBS Publications, n.s. 18 (Oxford, 1975), pp 153-94.
[1] Nixon, Howard M., ‘Harleian bindings’, in Studies in the Book Trade in honour of Graham Pollard, OBS Publications, n.s. 18 (Oxford, 1975), p. 175. See also Pearson, David, English bookbinding styles 1450-1800 (London, 2005), pp 76-9.
[2] Nixon, ‘Harleian bindings’, p. 154.
[3] Craig, Maurice, Irish bookbindings 1600-1800 (London, 1954), p. 44.
[4] On the parliamentary binders see Craig, Maurice, ‘The Irish Parliamentary Bindings’, The Book Collector, 2 (1953), 24-38; and Kinnane, Vincent, ‘The ‘Dark and Delicate Style’ of Parliamentary Binder A: A group of Bindings in the Worth Library, Dublin’, The Book Collector, 48, no. 3 (1999), 372-86.
[5] Kinane, ‘The ‘Dark and Delicate Style’ of Parliamentary Binder A’, 374.
[6] A black and white image of this binding may be found in Craig, Irish bookbindings 1600–1800, plate 22 and a colour image is in McDonnell, Joseph, Five hundred years of the art of the book in Ireland, 1500 to the present (Dublin, 1997), plate 30.
[7] Craig, Maurice, Irish bookbindings 1600-1800, p. 11. Craig does, however, suggest that Trinity College Dublin’s copy of Samuel Clarke’s Paraphrases on the Gospel (Dublin, 1737), which contains the same bird tool used in the 1740s by Parliamentary Binder A, is ‘probably by Parliamentary Binder A’; this would significantly re-date Parliamentary Binder A’s use of the tool. On this see Craig, Maurice, Irish Bookbindings; The Irish Heritage Series 6, (1976), caption of plate 2.
[8] McDonnell, Joseph and Patrick Healy, Gold-tooled bookbindings commissioned by Trinity College Dublin in the eighteenth century (Leixlip, 1987), p. 91, plate III.
[9] Ibid., p. 90.
[10] A number of Leathley’s bindings are illustrated in McDonnell and Healy, Gold-tooled bookbindings commissioned by Trinity College Dublin. See chapter four of the same work for information about the Leathleys.
[11] Examples of these two types may be seen in McDonnell and Healy, Gold-tooled bookbindings commissioned by Trinity College Dublin, plates XXIX and V respectively.
[12] Horace, Quinti Horatii Flacci opera … 2 vols (London, 1733-37), illustrated in Maddock, Philip et al., Exquisite and rare: Bookbindings from the library of Benjamin Guinness, 3rd Earl of Iveagh (Dublin, 2013), pp 86-7.
[13] Gardham, Julie, ‘British Bookbinding: 16th to 19th Century: An exhibition originally held in the Hunterian Library, University of Glasgow in December 1970’.
[14] McDonnell and Healy, Gold-tooled bookbindings commissioned by Trinity College Dublin, plates XXIX, XXXVII and XL respectively. On Hawkey see O’Riordain, Turlough, ‘John Hawkey (1703–59), schoolmaster and editor’, Dictionary of Irish Biography.
[15] Ibid., plate XXXII (for the 1745 edition of Horace’s Opera). Maddock et al, note that it was not only used on the 1747 edition of Paradise Lost but also on Hawkey’s 1752 Dublin edition of Milton’s Paradise Regained, which was likewise bound by Leathley: on this see Maddock et al, Exquisite and rare: Bookbindings from the library of Benjamin Guinness, 3rd Earl of Iveagh (Dublin, 2013), pp 62-5.
[16] McDonnell and Healy, Gold-tooled bookbindings commissioned by Trinity College Dublin, plate XLII.
[17] Ibid., plates XLVII and LIII respectively; On Pullen see ‘Pullen (Pullein, Pulleyn), Samuel (1713–84), clergyman and author’, Dictionary of Irish Biography.
[18] McDonnell and Healy, Gold-tooled bookbindings commissioned by Trinity College Dublin, plates XXXI and LIV respectively. On the Dublin printer Samuel Powell (1707-75), see Pollard, Mary, A Dictionary of the members of the Dublin book trade 1500-1800 (London, 2000), pp 467-69.
[19] Parliamentary Binder A’s use of the ‘mirror’ tool may be seen on John Hawkey (ed), D. Junii Juvenalis et A. Persii Flacci Satyrae (Dublin, 1746), illustrated in Maddock et al, Exquisite and rare, pp 108-9; Craig, Irish bookbindings 1600-1800, plate 23, is an example from the College Binder. Craig notes that the earliest imprint of a book linked to the College Binder is 1733-37: Craig, p. 12.
[20] Ibid., plate 49, is The Gentleman’s and Citizen’s Almanack (Dublin, 1776), where the mirror tool may be found in the angles of the highly decorated covers.