Book cover, copper gilt, North Europe, 1670

In the middle of the seventeenth century, naturalistic flowers were in high fashion in ornamental decoration. The range of vivid colours available to painters in enamel using techniques developed by the Toutin family and the enamellers of Blois and Paris in about 1630 were ideally suited to floral painting.

There are watchcases and watch dials, and small cases and objects of many kinds decorated in painted enamel, and similar enamelling was painted on the backs of jewels. The style is recorded, for example, in a suite of prints after Gilles Légaré, entitled Livre des ouvrages d'orfèvrerie fait par Gilles Légaré Orfèvre du Roi , published in 1663, where the blooms are naturalistic, but, as on the front and back panels of this binding, they are symmetrically placed and the sprays of foliage are carefully balanced.

The impact of the enamelling on this binding is superb, but neither the enamelling nor the engraving is of the highest quality in execution. It lacks the refinement of court work in Paris and is more brightly coloured. Painted enamelling swept across Europe rapidly after its introduction in the 1630s and it is possible that this binding could have been made in France, the Netherlands or in a German centre such as Augsburg. Copper gilt book cover, set with plaques enamelled in high relief with floral decoration.

It appears that the relief has been achieved by modelling the flowers and foliage in exceptionallly thick white enamel, which, when examined closely, has many holes caused by air bubbles in the enamel. The vivid colours (pink, blue, green, yellow) have been added in painted enamel. The ground between the flowers and foliage is painted in gold. In a number of areas the enamel has been damaged and repaired. The gilt-metal borders and the spine of the book are engraved with a pattern of repeated diagonals alternating with circles on a hatched ground. The two gilt-metal clasps are engraved with foliage. The binding contains a book of plain white paper pages with pink end papers, and gilt edges.