Page:Historical essay on the art of bookbinding (IA 0130ARTO).pdf/18

18 the sixteenth century. The precious books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were confided to goldsmiths, enamellers and illuminators, as heretofore. We have many details of their workmanship in the inventories of the libraries of Charles VI. of France (1399), of the dukes of Burgundy, and of the dukes of Orleans, of Chaucer’s royal patron Edward III., whose style of binding may be imagined from the following extracts from the archives of the British Museum:

In the inventory of Charles VI. are missals of silver gilt covers, and of velvet embroidered with the fleur-de-lys, and the arms of France enamelled on the silver clasps. Other bindings were of vellum, silk, or dressed leather, deer skin, fox skin, sheep skin, calf skin, and the lamentable goat skin (whence bouquin), and hog skin, of which the irrepressible book-worm is particularly fond.