ROCOCO RED MOROCCO
[BIBLE.]
The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments … diligently compared and revised …
Oxford, T. Wright and W. Gill, 1769.
[bound with:]
[DOWNAME, John.] A Brief Concordance or Table to the Bible … London, C. and R. Ware, 1762.Two works in one vol., 4to, Bible: ff. [647], Downame: ff. [36]; with the Apocrypha (on a new register between 5K4 and 5L1); title of Bible within Oxford rules; some minor foxing and staining, gatherings 4T and 4U stained at foot, 4U1 fragile, with a tear; else a good copy in a London binding of full red morocco, gilt to a very elaborate design with wide borders of rococo ornaments enclosing five compartments reticulated with dotted lines, a sunburst at the head with a Paschal lamb below, a chandelier suspended from the centre-top compartment, vases of flowers atop columns in the upper corners, gates of heaven at the foot, all interspersed with ship, insect, bird, and dog tools, floral sprays, no fewer than seven tall thin column tools in increasing sizes, and six figure tools, including King David playing a harp, and a group of four carrying the Ark of the Covenant, spine gilt in compartments with floral tools, roll tools at the head and foot; front covers a little rubbed, corners and head and foot of spine restored.
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The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments … diligently compared and revised …
First quarto edition of the Oxford ‘standard’ Bible, as revised by Benjamin Blayney of Hertford College, Oxford (1728–1801), later Regius Professor of Hebrew. The quarto and folio editions of 1769, of which this was the first to be finished, were printed from the same setting of type differently disposed; most of the folios were destroyed in a fire at the Bible Warehouse in London.
This copy is distinguished by its extraordinary binding, an extremely elaborate example of English rococo work, of which there were a small number of practitioners in the 1760s and ’70s. For similar examples see Maggs catalogue 1075, items 177 and 185 (sharing four figure tools with ours, the other tools generically similar but different), and Henry Davis Gift II, 185, one of a set of prayer books bound for the Earl of Chesterfield c. 1776 (sharing two figure tools and possibly one of the rococo arc tools). Here the proliferation of tools employed far exceeds all the above examples (we can count no fewer than thirty-five tools on the covers alone, several of which we can find no comparables for), but the execution is slightly haphazard – the chosen sheet of leather, for example, was insufficient for both covers and the spine, and was made up on the rear with a 2–3 cm-wide strip on along the fore-edge.
Bible: ESTC T91970; DMH 1196. Downame: ESTC T81469.
