BIBLE.

Beautifully printed and exceptionally rare near miniature psalters, one of which is the only recorded copy, (the STC copy) in a very charming dos a dos binding, very well preserved with unusually bright and fresh colouring of the embroidery. The binding is a charming example of a contemporary English embroidered silk binding, bound dos a dos, in a very good state of preservation, with little of the fading of the colours usually found on such silk embroidery. Dos-à-dos bindings are formed so that the two books share a common lower board with their fore-edges facing in opposite directions. Their upper boards then form the outer covers. Thus whichever way the books are picked up they open at one or other title-page. The embroidery was made on a background of white silk with a charming all over design of flowers very skilfully sewn with fine gradations of coloured silk. It is technically and artistically work of the highest quality. The blue and red flowers on the spines, are sewn in compartments in imitation of conventional binding. The quality of the embroidered work and the silver thread work is impressive, a luxury object made for a lady of rank. Its state of preservation is very good indeed.

In the sixteenth century embroidered work was very popular with the Tudor princesses, gold and silver thread and pearls being largely used, often with very decorative effect. The simplest of these covers are also the best—but great elaboration was often employed …..Under the Stuarts the lighter feather-stitch was preferred, and there seems to have been a regular trade in embroidered Bibles and Prayer-books of small size, sometimes with floral patterns, sometimes with portraits of the King, or Scriptural scenes.” English Embroidered Bookbindings, Cyril Davenport. Davenport also notes that ladies often made embroidered gloves to match the binding “in hands thus gloved these little bindings, always pretty, often really artistic, must have looked exactly right, while their vivid colours must have been admirably in harmony with the gay Cavalier dresses.” Embroidery or needlework had been employed on ms. service books in medieval times but almost no English examples survive. The majority of surviving examples, and the only ones appearing on the market, date from the first half of the C17 when they again became fashionable on small service books or works of piety, particularly among ladies of rank. Few have endured in anything like their original condition. Fragile at best, many have become dilapidated through usage and later neglect, some were defaced or completely destroyed by disapproving Puritans during the Civil War, whilst the richest were invariably looted for their gold and silver threads. Where as here, they have survived virtually intact, few artifacts are more redolent of the feminine culture and society of Stuart England. An exceptional and most lovely example, from the heyday of English embroidered bindings.

The second work is recorded in STC as being untraced, having been recorded in a Quaritch catalogue from 1930, bound with STC 2406. Here it is.