SHAGREEN AND SILVER FILIGREE
[PSALMS.]
Les Pseaumes de David, mis en rime Françoise, par Clement Marot, et Theodore de Beze.
‘Se vendent à Charenton, par Antoine Cellier, demeurent à Paris … à l’Imprimerie des Roziers’, 1667.
12mo, pp. [472]; [π]2, *8, A-Kk6, a-c5, d-e4, F2; with copper-engraved title to [π]1, woodcut device to title, printed music throughout, ruled in red; closed tear to I4, F2 cut closely at outer margin; bound in contemporary shagreen with large silver filigree centrepieces, cornerpieces, and clasps, edges gilt, marbled endpapers; small losses to 2 cornerpieces, several pins sometime renewed in brass, boards slightly bowed; loosely inserted note with 3 ink inscriptions (see below).
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Les Pseaumes de David, mis en rime Françoise, par Clement Marot, et Theodore de Beze.
Charenton-printed French Psalms in a remarkable shagreen binding with silver-filigree furniture, with English provenance since the eighteenth century.
Produced around the Caspian Sea and found in western European bookbinding from the seventeenth-century, the irregular pimpled pattern of shagreen was produced by trampling small seeds into wet donkey skin. A durable and expensive material, it is almost always found with little or no decoration on small-format devotional books; it is here ornamented with intricate silver filigree centre- and cornerpieces and matching clasps to produce an elaborate though still-sombre effect.
A loosely inserted note testifies to this volume’s continuous chain of ownership, serving as a gift or memento and passing between five women in two families across the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Provenance:
1. ‘This French Psalm Book was left me by Mrs Jane Horsman of Bath. Received it Janry 1795.’
2. ‘The above was written by Mrs Mary Horsman of Clapham who died Marth 5th 1827 & left by will this french Psalm Book to Frances Solly Wife of Saml Reynolds Solly [1781–1866] of Perse Hill Hertfordshire.’
3. ‘Given to Catherine Alice Hammond Solly (Granddaughter of the above) by her Aunt Frances Sarah Meyer [née Solly] 1866.’
