Hobson (Anthony R.A.), 1921-2014; Culot (Paul)
Bibliotheca Wittockiana (Brussels)

(34 cm), 189 (1) pp., illustrations (some coloured, some folding). Corrigenda sheet loosely inserted. Publisher’s cloth, dust jacket. - Revision of the catalogue for an exhibition of bindings from the Michel Wittock collection shown in New York, Milan, and Brussels (Milan: Fondazione Luigi Berlusconi, 1990), adding a few more items, new indexes, and new colour illustrations. Twenty-one bindings are described by Anthony Hobson (Italian 16th-century bookbindings); fifty-three by Paul Culot (La reliure en France au XVIe siècle). ‘Most of Hobson's texts rely on his Humanists and Bookbinders and his Apollo and Pegasus, understandably so as they have their origin in exactly the period and country that fill such a prominent place in both books. They do not therefore always offer something new. Culot's texts on the bindings of the time of Grolier similarly rely heavily on the conclusions of Humanists and Bookbinders, but his texts accompanying the somewhat later bindings are to a much greater extent the result of new research. Special praise is here due to the fact that it is not only the most important bindings, such as those for Grolier, Mahieu, the French kings and the fanfare bindings, which are examined, but also those which are considered less important and are practically always left undiscussed in this kind of study.’ (from a review by Jan Storm van Leeuwen, in Quaerendo, volume 22, 1992, pp.135-137). ¶ Edition limited to 750 numbered copies (this no. 418). Several pencilled annotations. Light shelf wear; otherwise a fine copy.