# The Binding Is a Later Owner's Object > 16 of the 18 manuscripts and printed books in this archive wear a binding a later owner paid for. That rebinding dates the link and is when old evidence went. > The Study - 2026-09-18 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-binding-is-a-later-owners-object/ ## Key points - We read the binding line in all 18 manuscripts and printed books among the 285 published records. In 16 of them the binding was made for a later owner; only the Doves Press Bible, bound by the press's own bindery in 1903 to 1905, and the Bodleian First Folio, bound for its first owner by William Wildgoose in the 1620s, wear a cover contemporary with the book. - Five bindings carry both a binder and a date, and every one of the five dates is an owner's date: George III's velvet binding for the Mainz Psalter in 1800, Bishop Maltby's silver binding for the Lindisfarne Gospels in 1852 or 1853, Bruyere's Lyon binding for Didier Petit before 1843, Wildgoose for the Bodleian in the 1620s and the Doves Bindery for its own press. - The holder and the record disagree on the best-known date in the set. The British Library's catalogue dates the Smith, Nicholson and Co binding of the Lindisfarne Gospels to 1853 and does not name Maltby; the usual account, which our record follows, says 1852. The same catalogue records that a sixteenth-century owner's inscription on f. 211r is no longer visible. - Rebinding is when evidence goes. The Beauvais Missal's leaf with the 1356 gift inscription vanished when Philip Duschnes broke the book in 1942; the Khuner Nuremberg Chronicle kept nothing of its 1493 binding across a 488-year gap; Sotheby's specialist says the Codex Sassoon's trail goes cold at its late-medieval rebinding; nobody knows who disbound the Codex Leicester. - The best-kept evidence is on pastedowns and endpapers. The Folger preserved two Swedish lottery handbills of about 1770 through every rebinding of the 1594 Titus Andronicus, and the Library of Congress Gutenberg Bible carries three owners on one pastedown inside its pigskin binding of about 1560: Saint Blasien, Vollbehr and the Library itself in 1930. ## In 16 of 18 records the binding belongs to a later owner ## A rebinding names the owner who paid for it ## The rebinding is the moment the evidence goes ## What survives is what the binder chose to keep ## When the binding is the only witness ## The two books whose binding is the maker's ## Where the cover disagrees with the catalogue ## How to read a binding line ## Why this archive is free to read A binding is the one part of a book that a maker almost never gets to keep. Of the 18 manuscripts and printed books in this archive, 16 wear a cover that a later owner paid for, and that payment is the best-dated event in most of their chains: a King in 1800, a bishop in 1852 or 1853, a Lyon collector before 1843, a Jesuit library between 1824 and 1870. The same event is where the flyleaves, the inscriptions and the pastedowns went, which is why the Beauvais Missal has lost its 1356 gift and the Khuner Chronicle has lost 488 years. Read the cover as an owner's signature, look for what the binder kept at the back of the book, and treat the maker's own binding, when you meet it on a Doves Press Bible, as the exception it is. ## Questions **Is the binding on the Lindisfarne Gospels original?** No. Aldred's tenth-century colophon describes a treasure binding by Ethelwald and Billfrith, and that cover is lost at an unknown date. The book now wears a silver and jewelled binding by Smith, Nicholson and Co of Lincoln's Inn, dated 1853 in the British Library's catalogue and 1852 in most accounts, which say Bishop Edward Maltby of Durham paid for it. **Who rebound the Beauvais Missal and when?** The Lyon binder Bruyere, for the collector Didier Petit de Meurville, before Petit's sale of 1843 where it was lot 354. Peter Kidd dates it by matching the 1843 sale description to the Broelemann catalogue of 1897. The binding was destroyed when Philip Duschnes broke the book up in 1942, and the leaf carrying the 1356 gift inscription has not been found. **Why is the Codex Leicester unbound?** Nobody we read can say. The 18 sheets are mounted individually between glass, which is how the manuscript travels and is exhibited. When the leather binding came off, and who removed it, is not established, and the Uffizi's own page describing it as in its original leather binding cannot be reconciled with the exhibition having shown it as separate pages. **What is a Doves Bindery pigskin Kelmscott Chaucer?** One of roughly 48 paper copies of the 1896 Kelmscott Chaucer bound at T. J. Cobden-Sanderson's Doves Bindery in full white pigskin, blind-tooled to William Morris's design, for 13 pounds 13 shillings on top of the 20-pound price. The Bodleian's copy, Broxb. 67.7, is one, and its description dates the binding to 1899. Most paper copies went out in quarter holland with blue paper boards. **How do you date a rebinding when the binder left no date?** From the owner's records around it. The Bodleian's Binders Book of 1621 to 1624 records the First Folio going to Wildgoose. The Beauvais binding is dated by the match between an 1843 sale description and an 1897 catalogue. Where nothing of that kind survives, as with the Riviere binding on the Columbus letter or the Art Bookbinding Studio's work on the Khuner Chronicle, the binder's name is a name and not a date. ## Sources - [1] Royal Collection Trust, collection record for The Mainz Psalter, RCIN 1071478, binding description and provenance. Read in full 18 September 2026 in the in-app browser after a 403 on the plain fetch. Source for the purple velvet, gilt corner-pieces, crowned GIIIR monogram, the front-board lettering, the 1758, 1782 and 1800 provenance and the 400 pounds reimbursed in 1817. - [2] British Library, Archives and Manuscripts catalogue, Cotton MS Nero D IV. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the binding by Messrs Smith, Nicholson and Co of Lincoln's Inn, London, 1853, the flyleaf count, Aldred's colophon on f. 259r naming Ethelwald and Billfrith, the Thomas Turner inscription on f. 211r no longer visible and Robert Bowyer's signature on f. 2v under ultraviolet light. - [3] Bodleian Libraries, The Bodleian's original First Folio of Shakespeare, The Conveyor. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for Library Records e.528, the Binders Book of 1621 to 1624 recording the First Folio sent to the binder Wildgoose in Oxford on arrival, and for Falconer Madan's 1905 research. - [4] Peter Kidd, The Early Provenance of the Beauvais Missal, Medieval Manuscripts Provenance blog, January 2015. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for Didier Petit de Meurville's sale of 1843, lot 354, the binding description matching the 1897 Broelemann catalogue, the attribution to the Lyon binder Bruyere and the conclusion that the binding was executed for Petit. - [5] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 356792, Liber chronicarum, accession 1981.1178.29. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the constituent line Bound by Art Bookbinding Studio with role Binder, the isPublicDomain flag and the George Khuner credit line. - [6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France, 54.1.2, provenance tab. Read in full 18 September 2026 in the in-app browser after a 429 on the plain fetch. Source for the dimensions with binding, 9.9 by 7.2 by 3.8 cm, and the provenance line Louis-Jules de Chatelet and Christine de Gleseneuve, Bar, France, ca. 1618 to before 1672, and the Neuschwanstein inventory number R.1052. - [7] Folger Shakespeare Library, Shakespeare Documented, Titus Andronicus, first edition: only surviving copy of Shakespeare's first printed play. Read in full 18 September 2026 at the corrected URL after a 404 on the record's link. Source for the endpapers made from handbills for an eighteenth-century Swedish lottery, the paper binding glued to them, their preservation through subsequent rebindings and conservation, and the 2,000 pound purchase entered as stock. - [8] Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, catalogue description of Beinecke MS 408. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the binding line: s. xviii-xix, vellum case, remains of early paper pastedowns. - [9] Rene Zandbergen, voynich.nu, History of the MS. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the rebinding of a large number of Collegium Romanum manuscripts between 1824 and 1870 because of woodworm in their wooden boards, and for the Beckx label. - [10] Library of Congress, The Gutenberg Bible at the Library of Congress, Frequently Asked Questions and The Library's Copy pages. Both read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the three volumes bound about 1560 in wooden boards covered with white pigskin, the two roll-stamps of Christ with John, Peter and Paul and of Faith, Hope, Charity and Justice, the unidentified bindery, and the Saint Blasien bookplate on the front pastedown with the motto Religione et Patria Nihil Antiquius. - [11] Christie's, lot 157, The Rothschild Prayerbook, sale 2819, New York, 29 January 2014, catalogue note. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for red velvet, renewed, the mid-sixteenth-century silver-gilt centrepieces with the Wittelsbach arms, cornerpieces, clasps and catches attributed to the circle of Wenzel Jamnitzer, the gauffered edges matching the miniatures and the open question of a sixteenth or nineteenth-century date for the mounts. - [12] Bibliotheque nationale de France, Archives et manuscrits, NAL 2334, the Ashburnham Pentateuch. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the nineteenth-century half-binding in Russian leather over wooden boards and the spine title dating the manuscript to the fifth century. - [13] Sotheby's, Will Fenstermaker, The Remarkable History of Codex Sassoon, 15 February 2023. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the first rebinding at Makisin in the thirteenth century and for Sassoon's bookplate inside the cover. - [14] H. R. West, The Bristol 1526 Tyndale Testament, its Origin and its History, Tyndale Society Reformation journal. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the present binding being almost certainly eighteenth-century, the eighteenth-century note inside the front cover and the possibility of a rebinding under the Earls of Oxford. - [15] Wikimedia Commons, file page and wikitext for Bodleian Libraries, Works 5.jpg, uploaded from Digital Bodleian by the Bodleian's Wikimedian in Residence. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the Doves Bindery, 1899, white pigskin binding of the Bodleian's Kelmscott Chaucer, Broxb. 67.7, and for the plate's public-domain status. - [16] Wikimedia Commons, file page for Gutenberg Bible WDL7782.jpg, from the World Digital Library item 7782, the Library of Congress copy. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the identification of the plate as the Library of Congress copy with the Saint Blasien bookplate and for its public-domain status. - [17] Wikimedia Commons, file page for Rothschild Prayerbook 1.jpg, from the Christie's 2014 lot photography. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the plate of the upper cover and its licence tag. - [18] Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, Pitts acquires the Doves Press Bible, 30 September 2024. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the publisher's original limp vellum binding. - [19] Universitatsbibliothek der LMU Munchen, catalogue record for the Waldseemuller globe gores, Cim. 107. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for one print in the volume coming from the Benedictine monastery of Oberalteich, whose library passed to Landshut at the secularisation of 1803.