Library Company of Philadelphia
It’s time for our final #BookBouquets feature! We love the delicate gilt-stamped decoration on our copy of Frances Osgood’s The Floral Offering (Philadelphia, circa 1846). In addition to poetic meditations on a variety of flowers, The Floral Offering includes several colored plates of floral bouquets.
Browse our database of 19th-century cloth bindings to see more!
This week’s #BookBouquets feature is ready for festival season! This delicate flower crown adorns our copy of Robert Buist’s American Flower Garden Directory (Philadelphia, 1845).
Browse our database of 19th-century cloth bindings to see more!
It is #NationalLibraryWeek and our way of celebrating is unwrapping a new purchase of publishers’ bindings. It was hard to pick one group to highlight because we adore every beautiful binding that was revealed, but ultimately settled on this trio of pocket-sized books. We are biblio nerds and we are not ashamed.
We’re excited to join @loynosca and #IGLibraries for this month’s social media challenge: #BookBouquets! Watch for a floral book cover each Wednesday in April.
Our copy of The Bouquet (Boston, 1844) features a gorgeous gilt-stamped floral bouquet against a faded-purple cloth. We think this binding is stunning as is, and bet it was even more striking when the purple cloth was new.
Browse our database of 19th-century cloth bindings to see more!
The Bouquet.
Boston : Oliver L. Perkins. 1844. 11 cm x 7 cm x cm.
We’re excited to join @loynosca and #IGLibraries for this month’s social media challenge: #BookBouquets! Watch for a floral book cover each Wednesday in April.
Our copy of Lydia H. Sigourney’s The Voice of the Flowers (Hartford, 1848) is a stunner with its gilt-stamped bouquet, blind-stamped floral decoration, and black and red printed striped cloth.
Browse our database of 19th-century cloth bindings to see more!
Sigourney, Mrs. L. H.
The voice of flowers.
Hartford : H. S. Parsons and co.
1848
We’re digging out after another snow storm here in Philadelphia and feeling ready for some warmer weather and the appearance of the first spring flowers. Until then, we’re getting our floral-fix with these simple gold stamped flowers on our copy of Mary Botham Howitt’s Floral Gems (New York, 1849). #PublishersBindingThursday
Browse our database of 19th-century cloth bindings to see more!
Howitt, Mary Botham.
Floral gems. New York : C.P. Huestis.
1849
We love the intricate blind-stamped design on our copy of George Weaver’s Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women (New York, 1856). #PublishersBindingThursday
Weaver’s preface states that “Society does little else than to teach its girls to be dolls and drudges.” As was the case with other conduct of life texts from this time period, Aims and Aids was intended as a resource for young women to encourage self-education in all areas of life, including moral and intellectual education as well as promoting physical exercise.
Browse our database of 19th-century cloth bindings to see more!
Weaver, George S.
Aims and aids for girls and young women.
New York : Fowler and Wells, 1856.
Our copy of David Gould’s Life of Robert Morris (Boston, 1834) is bound in a rare and gorgeous pale pink ribbon-embossed cloth. Ribbon-embossed grain got its name from its original intention: as decoration for cloth ribbons. However, the rising popularity of grained and decorated book-cloth in the 1830s and 1840s led to the production of ribbon-embossed cloth for use as a book covering.
This is the only example of this specific ribbon-embossed pattern we have in our collection – we hope this post inspires others to look through their collections to see if there are more examples to share!
Gould, David. Life of Robert Morris. Boston : Leonard W. Kimball. 1834
There is so much to love about this binding on our copy of Jaeger’s The Life of North American Insects (New York, 1859): The gilt-stamped insects! The wave-grained bookcloth visible through the gilt! And that rich purple cloth!
But why is the spine so faded? Admittedly, most spines of cloth-bound books show some fading, but purple bookcloth is notorious for fading. Notice the distinct line where the fading begins. The portion of the cloth that did not fade was protected from light, probably by another book on the shelf.
Browse the Library Company’s database of 19th-Century Cloth Bindings to see more!
#PublishersBindingThursday
What a perfect binding for #WetNoseWednesday ! We love 19th-Century Publishers’ Bindings at the LCP, so much so that we created a searchable database of over 3,000 cloth bindings available online. This binding for Storke’s The Domestic Animals is one of our favorites!
The Domestic Animals. Storke, Elliot G. 310, [2] p., [1] leaf of plates (frontis.) : ill. ; 21 cm.