During the Middle Ages Venice was the most important European centre of trade with Eastern countries, and so it naturally comes about that the first European gold-tooling on leather comes from that great art centre, and occurs in Italian bindings of the fifteenth century. Not only does gold-tooling first appear in Venetian work, but there also it reached its highest development, several of the early bindings tooled in gold on dark leathers being quite unsurpassed for delicacy and originality of design, as well as for beauty of workmanship. In several of these bindings the direct inspiration that has been afforded by the study of Oriental originals is very apparent.
Innumerable also are the methods the Italian artists followed with regard to their management of gold leaf, or gold foil; sometimes a whole design is picked out with minute gold dots, sometimes backgrounds are flatly gilded all over, leaving the design on the leather, and sometimes the method of working closely resembles that followed at the present day. The early Venetian bookbinders, as well as some of the Oriental gilders, knew some way of gilding a line drawn on leather by means of a style. This is a difficult thing to do, but effective in competent hands; and if it could be done with any degree of safety, such a process would now open up an entirely new field for decorative bookbinders, who are at present much bound down by the limitations forced upon them in consequence of chiefly using set stamps specially cut for each curve and bend and detail. Of course such lines are easy to execute in blind, but it is when the gilding begins that the difficulties increase. The essential point in gold-tooling on leather, as we know it, consists in the fixation of gold leaf by means of albumen. The design is marked in blind on leather and painted over with glair of egg, the gold leaf then being carefully laid over it; the marks of the blind-tooling show clearly through the gold, and each of these impressions is steadily reimpressed with the same tools in the same places over the gold. The tools are heated to a point just sufficient to harden the albumen without burning the leather. If necessary, this process can be repeated again and again, until in the finest specimens of such work the gold looks as if wires of the solid burnished metal were actually inlaid on the leather. The albumen protected by the gold
PLATE III.
BERTHELET’S DEVICE OF LUCRETIA STABBING HERSELF.
See page [49.]
makes such a strong surface that frequently the gilded letters, or designs, which were of course originally in intaglio, are found in relief, the explanation being that the surrounding leather, being unprotected, has worn or powdered away all around. The use of albumen is, however, not entirely without a drawback, as it is a favourite food for some small grub, so that sometimes, instead of a beautiful gilded line, there is only a small trench following the same track, all the gold and all the albumen having been eaten away, leaving the design as it was, but in a different colour.
As a matter of fact, the earliest English binding now existing on which gold occurs is in the Bodlein Library at Oxford, but it would hardly come under the heading of gold-tooling. It is on a manuscript written by Robert Witinton about 1516, and was given by him to Cardinal Wolsey. The binding is in brown sheepskin, and is decorated with block impressions from panel stamps, three on each side, the centre one representing St. George and the dragon, and the side ones bearing the Tudor emblems, portcullis, pomegranate, and double rose. These stamps are well and boldly cut, and the impressions are gilded, but I think it would be difficult to say positively whether they were simply overlaid with gold leaf after being made on the leather, or whether the gold was fixed by the operation of stamping. I rather expect the latter method was used; but the volume is a very curious and interesting one even if such is not the case, and to some extent may explain the gilding mentioned in Piers Courteys’s account.