SILK AND SILVER
[ALMANACK.]
London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1820.
[London,] Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1820].
48mo? (54 x 32 mm), pp. [24]; engraved throughout, printed on one side only (doubtless on a single sheet) then cut into bifolia and pasted back-to-back to form a book of 13 ff. with the first recto and last verso blank (here pasted down); four-page view of the London Institution Moorfields, duty stamp to title-page; a very good copy in contemporary blue silk over boards with an outer case formed of 4 hinged silver filigree panels, the fourth panel a clasp at fore-edge, edges gilt; silk rubbed through at board-edges, somewhat sunned where exposed through the filigree, but an excellent example.
An extraordinary binding of silver filigree over blue silk on a miniature London Almanack for 1820.
The miniature London Almanack was first produced in 1749 (surviving in a unique copy at the British Library) and appeared annually until at least 1823. It is typically found in delicate decorative bindings with morocco onlays and gold tooling in geometric patterns and a matching étui, produced as fashionable New Year’s gifts. The present example, with an outer case of silver filigree to a scrolled foliate design over pale blue silk, was no doubt produced for the highest échelon of the same market. It is notable, however, that bindings of this quality were almost certainly less ephemeral than their contents: it is likely intentional that the silver case could very easily be removed and transferred onto the next year’s almanack.
