About the time of the invention of printing, leather bindings began to be decorated with gold tooling. Tooling is the name given to the designs impressed upon the leather with various small dies so manipulated as to make a connected pattern. When the impressions are gilded the dull leather is brightened and beautified in proportion to the skill and taste expended by the workman. The art of gold tooling is believed to have originated in the East, and to have been brought to Italy by Venetian traders, or, as it has also been suggested, through the manuscripts which were dispersed at the fall of Constantinople. In any case, it was in Italy that it was first adopted and brought to perfection, and other European countries learned the art from Italian craftsmen. Chief among the early Italian gilt bindings are those made of the finest leathers and inscribed THO. MAIOLI ET AMICORVM. Nothing whatever is known of Thomasso Maioli, except that he had a large library and spared no expense in clothing his books in bibliopegic purple and fine linen.
What Maioli appears to have been among Italian book-collectors, Jean Grolier, Vicomte d'Aguisy, was among French bibliophiles. He held for a time the post of Treasurer of the Duchy of Milan, and while in Italy he collected books for his library and made the acquaintance of Aldus Manutius. Many of the Aldine books are dedicated to him, for Aldus occasionally stood in need of financial aid and found in Grolier a generous and practical patron of literature. Some of the famous bindings which distinguish Grolier's books were executed in Italy, others in France, where Italian bookbinders were then teaching their art to the native workmen. They display the same style of design that decorates the books of Maioli, and Maioli's benevolent inscription too, Grolier adapted to his own use, and stamped upon certain of his books IO. GROLIERII ET AMICORVM. The exact signification of these words is obscure. At first sight they might appear to refer delicately to the joy with which the owner of the book would place it at the disposal of his friends, but this does not accord with what is known of the character of book-lovers. Perhaps their only meaning is that Maioli and Grolier were at all times ready to please their friends and to gratify themselves by exhibiting their treasures. But since several copies of the same work are known to have been bound for Grolier—for instance, five copies of the Aldine Virgil—it has been suggested that he occasionally made presents of his books, though he drew the line at lending them.
Grolier's copy of the De Medicina of Celsus, which is in the British Museum, is bound in a somewhat different style from that usually associated with his name. It is in brown leather; blind-tooled except for some gold and coloured roundels in different parts of the device. In the centre of both covers is a medallion in colours, that on the upper cover representing Curtius leaping into the abyss in the Forum, and that on the lower cover representing the defence of the bridge by Horatius. This is an Italian binding.
Although it was Italy who first improved upon the usual methods of mediæval binding, and from her that France took lessons in this new and better way of clothing books, it was France who was destined to bring the art to its highest excellence. Having learned her lesson, she perfected herself in it, and the workmen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Geoffroy Tory, Nicholas, Clovis, and Robert Eve, and Le Gascon, carried French bookbinding into the very first rank, where it may be considered to remain to this day.
Some of the finest French examples extant are those which were executed for Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois. Both were ardent bibliophiles, and both indulged in very sumptuous bindings for their books. Some of the chief treasures in our great libraries to-day are the beautiful volumes which Henry presented to the duchess, and which are ornamented with the royal lilies of France, accompanied by the bows and arrows and crescents which were Diana's own badges and the initials of the king and the duchess.
Catherine de Medicis also was an enthusiastic book collector, which may surprise those who think that a person who is devoted to books is necessarily harmless. Some of her books she brought to France as part of her dowry, others she acquired by fair means or foul as was most convenient, and to their bindings she paid particular attention and kept a staff of bookbinders in her employ.
To such a pitch of extravagance did the bibliophiles of the period go in the binding of their books, that in 1583 Henry III. of France decreed that ordinary citizens should not use more than four diamonds to the decoration of one book, and the nobility not more than five. The king himself, however, was as extravagant as any of his subjects, at any rate as regards the designs he favoured. Many of his books are clad in black morocco, bearing representations of skulls, cross-bones, tears, and other melancholy emblems. He developed his taste for these strange decorations, it is said, when, as Duke of Anjou, he loved and lost Mary of Clèves.
The early printers at first executed their own bookbinding, but presently left it to the stationers. It was generally only the larger works which they thought worth covering, and the small ones were simply stitched. Antony Koburger, of whom mention has already been made, bound his own books and ornamented them in a style peculiarly his own. Caxton bound his according to the prevailing fashion, with leather sides, plain or blind-tooled with diagonal lines, forming diamond-shaped compartments in each of which is stamped a species of dragon.
About the sixteenth century it became fashionable to have one's books
“Full goodly bound in pleasant coverture
Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure,”