Obscure Occupations - Greensmen

Treasure Binding

A treasure binding is a rich luxurious book-cover using precious metals, including gold and silver, and jewels.  The binding technique is the same as for a leather binding, with sections of the book stitched together and bound to wooden boards.  Treasure Bindings appear to have existed since antiquity although there are no extant examples and Early Medieval ones are rare.  They became used less towards the end of the Middle Ages, but a few continued to be produced, mostly for the Eastern Orthodox church.  These bindings were generally used on illuminated manuscripts and gospels designed for use in the church rather than the library.

Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram c870

The majority of Treasure Bindings have been lost as the valuable metals and jewels were removed by looters or by owners in need of cash.  The Book of Kells lost its cover after a robbery and the fate of the cover of the Lindisfarne Gospels is unknown.  Book furniture, including straps and clasps, was common in the later Middle Ages, decorative clasps made with jewels or repousse metal were made in Holland and Germany from the 12th century.

From the 9th century in Scotland and Ireland books that had belonged to monastic leaders were regarded as relics and were enshrined in decorated reliquary boxes called “cumdach”  and thereafter were probably not used as books.  They were even carried into battle as a kind of standard.  Jewelled slipcases or boxes were also used to house small editions of the Koran at this time.

Treasure Bindings were only affordable by the wealthy elite.  The earliest reference is from St Jerome in 384, he writes of wealthy Christian women whose books are written in gold on purple vellum and clothed with gems.  In the 16th century “books of golde”, small devotional books adorned with gold or enamelled covers were worn on a chain around the neck or on a girdle by members of the English court.  The gems and gold were not only to display richness but also served to offer a foretaste of the glorious Celestial City. 

 

Miniature manuscript used as a pendant Italian c1550 

Hardly any English early Medieval Treasure Books survived the dissolution of the monasteries (1536-1541) when ecclesiastical libraries had to “strip off and pay into the kings treasury all gold and silver found on Papish books of devotion”

The artistic tradition of jewelled bookbinding continued but in a more simple fashion.  Luxury bindings were still in use, Queen Elizabeth I favoured velvet bindings.  She had books bound in velvet of different colours, though chiefly red, with clasps of gold and silver.  Some had pearls and precious stones set in their bindings.  Through the 16th and 17th centuries the style evolved to one using velvet, satin, silk and canvas decorated less with jewels and more with embroidery of gold and silver thread, pearls and sequins.

Embroidered binding belonging to Elizabeth 1

The practice of luxury binding waned until the beginning of the 20th century when Francis Sangorski and George Sutcliff set up a bindery in London.  Unlike medieval bindings they used semi-precious stones set into beautifully designed bindings, using multi-coloured leather and elaborate gold tooling.  Their most famous work was “the great Omar” a large copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam which included gold tooling, inlays and 1050 jewels, in a peacock design.  It went down with the Titanic in 1912. Today a third reproduction is the only one to survive as the second, made by Sutcliff’s nephew Stanley Bray, was lost in the London Blitz of World War 2.  The third reproduction, also by Bray, is in the British Library.

Today binding with jewels is rare as such objects are less viable in todays society.  Bindings that do survive today are in private collections or libraries and museums across the world.