ELABORATE BINDING WITH METAL FURNITURE

[Binding; Book of Hours]: Heures Nouvelles dediees au Roy, contenant les offices qui se disent à l’Eglise pendant l’année […] A l’usage de Rome et de Paris Suivant le nouveau Breviaire. A Paris, au Palais, Chez Grange [De l’imprimerie de Valleyre] 1740. 

This scarce eighteenth-century book of hours is notable for its contemporary binding with unusual metal fixtures and decorative endpapers. An embossed metal heart has been nailed to each cover and further nails are used to create an ornamental border, with the shanks obscured beneath decorative pastedowns. The repeated patterns of stars and dots on the decorative pastedowns and endpapers calls to mind the work of German brocade paper maker Johann Michael Munck (see e.g. pattern no. 30, Kopylov 2012, no. 126). The text (Use of Rome and Paris) was produced by the Valleyre printing house and includes a woodcut illustration of the crucifixion. 

Details

Printed. One volume, 13.3 x 8.8 cms in binding, duodecimo, pp [12] 577 [7]. Collation: [ ]⁶ A-Hh [alternating gatherings of 12 and 6]. Lower corner of sig. Cc4 uncut (paper accidentally folded in prior to trimming). Text mostly printed in two columns, with some horizontal text in the litany. Woodcut crucifixion opposite title page. Woodcut headpiece, decorative initials. 

Bound in black pebble-grained goatskin, both covers with an embossed metal heart nailed to centre, surrounded by six flowers made up of metal fixtures, and a dotted border made from nails. Decorative endpapers with a repeated gold pattern of stars and dots. All edges gilt. Condition (textblock): light browning, folios occasionally adhered to each other at edges due to the gilding process. Condition (binding): approximately 8 metal fixtures missing out of an original total of around 200, a few other fixtures bent. Wear at edges, light rubbing.  

Provenance: c.aaaa15H [?] to verso of front free endpaper. 

OCLC shows one copy (Biblioteca Nacional de Espana). 

Kopylov, Christiane F., Papiers dores d’Allemagne (Paris, Éditions des Cendres, 2012).