Bookbinding, Parisian epigraphic binding, France, 1529

BUDÉ, GUILLAUME. Summaire ou epitome du livre de Asse fait par le commandement du Roy par maistre Guillaume Bude conseiller du dict seigneur, et maistre des requestes ordinaires de son hostel, par ledict bude, reveu & additionne oultre les precedentes impressions.

Paris: (Pierre Vidoue for) Galliot du Pré, (3 January 1529) A shortened version of Budé’s respected work on Roman coinage, De asse (Paris, 1514), reprinted from the 1522 edition, in an elegant lettered binding attributed to the royal binder, Étienne Roffet. Identical tools were used by the Salel Binder (Laffitte and Le Bars, Reliures royales de la Renaissance, 11b), who was active in Paris and binding books for the royal library at the same time as Étienne Roffet. The overall design is not dissimilar to some early Grolier bindings (such as the 1528 Macrobius, Bookbindings from the library of Jean Grolier, no. 19). 8vo (166 x 100 mm). Roman type, 28 lines plus headline.

Collation: π4 a-k8: 84 leaves. Title printed in red, woodcut printer’s device on title-page and final verso (otherwise blank), woodcut initials. (Lightly browned, attributed to Étienne Roffet and probably executed in the early 1540s, an epigraphic binding with the title in within a double gilt fillet frame surrounded by curved leafy tools, an outer frame of blind and gilt fillets with corner fleurons, spine with blind ruling around bands, gilt edges, stubs from two pairs of ties, with engraved portraits of St Neot of Paris and Gregory I pasted to inside of covers.

In modern black drop-backed box. Acquisition: Purchased at the preceding sale. References: BP16 105865; USTC 24225; Dorothy Miner, The history of bookbinding 525-1950 AD, catalogue of an exhibition in cooperation with the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, 1957), no. 251; Grolier Club, Bookbinding styles during the Renaissance in France from the collection of Raphaël Esmerian (New York, 1966), no. 3