Cambridge Bookbindings : A blind-tooled binding for the University Library, ca.1690, with the arms of Tobias Rustat

Cambridge Bookbindings

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Coats of arms began to be added to bindings, to indicate ownership or donation, in the early sixteenth century and it became a common practice thereafter all over Europe. Only a few armorial stamps like this were applied in Cambridge, more often indicating gifts than personal ownership. The one at the centre of this binding is one which is often seen in the University Library, used to mark books which were bought with the fund created by an endowment by Tobias Rustat (1608-1694) in the late 1660s. Several versions of it were made from the late seventeenth-century onwards, and the Pindars were often instructed to add the stamp to relevant books. This binding, made not long after the imprint date of 1688, is stylistically very much in the same family as (<a href='PR-Q-AST-00005-00051-E'>Q*.5.51(E)</a>, <a href='PR-C-AST-00004-00028-B'>C*.4.28(B)</a> and <a href='PR-MM-00005-00046'>Mm.5.46</a>).</p><p>Pasteboards, covered with mid-brown sprinkled calfskin, blind-tooled. Red sprinkled leaf edges; narrow blind roll round board edges; plain paper flyleaves; separate printed waste pastedowns.</p><p>Dr David Pearson</p></p>