Cambridge Bookbindings : The last use, in Cambridge, of 16th century rolls, ca.1600-05

Valencia, Gregorio de 1549-1603

Cambridge Bookbindings

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>The kinds of broad rolls so typical of much sixteenth-century binding work, such as were used by the Godfrey and Spierinck workshops and their immediate successors, fell out of use in Cambridge around the turn of the seventeenth century. Rolls did continue to play a part in binding, but early seventeenth-century ones are much narrower and simpler in design. In Oxford and London, the older kinds of rolls continued to have some use until at least 1630, but in Cambridge new design ideas came along.</p><p>This is, until a later example turns up, the latest known roll binding of that type made in Cambridge. It is found on a book printed in 1598-1601, given to the University Library soon afterwards, and is likely to have been made ca.1601. The roll had then been in use for over half a century, having come to Cambridge in the 1550s and used by several binderies thereafter. Here it looks old and worn, and not very expertly applied; the fillet frames are likewise unevenly drawn, with clumsy crossovers at the corners. The use of wooden boards was by this time very unusual, even for large format books.</p><p>Wooden boards, covered with mid-brown calfskin, blind-tooled including Oldham roll HEg(4). Rebacked, with new spine leather and endleaves; remains of clasps.</p><p>Dr David Pearson</p></p>