Page:Historical essay on the art of bookbinding (IA 0130ARTO).pdf/31

Rh bert, Johan Norris and Ludovis Bloc, impressed by a momentary vanity on the covers of a work, are the earliest of bookbinders of the sixteenth century that are known. A bookbinder by the name of Pigorreau appears to have been the first workman to ply his vocation independently of the publishers, in 1620. The Eve family, invested with the title of “Book-binders to the King,” for fifty years, from 1578 to 1627, were printers and publishers, and to them has been attributed the bindings of De Thou.

Nicolas Eve is cited as bookbinder to Henri III.; Clovis Eve to Henri IV. and Louis XIII.; Robert Eve inherited his father’s title; but it cannot be said with absolute certainty that either of them executed the works which have made their name famous.

The history of modern bookbinding is not therefore to be identified with the name of a bookbinder previously to the year 1641, when flourished Le Gascon, to whom Jerome Pinchon has attributed the bindings of the library of De Thou’s sons. Le Gascon is only a surname, and the real name of the artist is as unknown as his history, but his binding of “La Guirlande de Julie” is ever to remain a model. A competent critic, Feydau, has said that as a gilder