Early America bookbinding and kindred subjects . : BENJAMIN OLDS BOOK-BINDER & STATIONER SIGN OF THE BIBLE NEWARK One of the most ornate signed bindingsof this period which has come to my no-tice is one upon the presentation copyfrom the city of Xew York to RobertLenox of Coldens Memoirs of the ErieCanal Celebration, Xew York. 1825. Itis bound in red straight-grained morocco,with wide rolled bands, partly blind-tooled and partly gilt. The panel backis elaborately tooled, and at the foot isthe signature of the binders, Wilson &Nichols, whose names appear in Long- I 72 The Bookman ivorths New Yo
Early America bookbinding and kindred subjects . : BENJAMIN OLDS BOOK-BINDER & STATIONER SIGN OF THE BIBLE NEWARK One of the most ornate signed bindingsof this period which has come to my no-tice is one upon the presentation copyfrom the city of Xew York to RobertLenox of Coldens Memoirs of the ErieCanal Celebration, Xew York. 1825. Itis bound in red straight-grained morocco,with wide rolled bands, partly blind-tooled and partly gilt. The panel backis elaborately tooled, and at the foot isthe signature of the binders, Wilson &Nichols, whose names appear in Long- I 72 The Bookman ivorths New York City Directory for1826-j, as engaged in business at PineStreet, corner of Broadway. The samedirectory contains the name of WilliamWalker, 32 Eldridge Street, at whosebindery, or that of his sons, removed toFulton Street, the writer remembers to lishment the reputation it enjoyed as a bindery. I regret that I cannot give the namesof the binders of the little three-volume Herodotus, New York. recently fell into my hands, and. have had some of his earliest bindingsexecuted. No examples of their skill, orrather the lack of it. are, however, now inmy possession. It was a heavy and in-artistic binding, only one remove—namely, that of the substitution of calf-skin or morocco for Russia leather—from the bindings in which the firm en-cased the heavy clay-books, journals andledgers which, I judge, constituted theirprincipal business, and won for the estab- the copy of The Minstrel and OtherPoems, by B. A. Eaton, Boston, 1833, be-longing to Mr. Beverly Chew, for theyare at least an approach to the bindingswhich the collector accepts and places onhis shelves because they are examples, ifnot elaborate ones, of bookbinding prac-tised as an art, and not as a trade. Thedesign on The Minstel is surprisingly Al-dirie in character, and cleanly bindings, in part at least, tooled by Early American Bookbinding 73 hand rank as artistic in a bibliophiles es-timation,
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbookbin, bookyear1902
