Jean Picard (bookbinder)

Last updated

Jean Picard was a French bookbinder, active around 1540. Picard is notable for having bound many books for the bibliophile Jean Grolier. He may also have worked at the French royal bindery.

Contents

While the Grolier bindings have long been sought after, the identities of the binders who made them were forgotten until twentieth-century scholarship threw light on Picard and other binders. The British Library's bindings catalogue attributes a number of bindings to Picard: they are almost all on books bound for Grolier around 1540 in Paris. [1] The Bibliothèque nationale de France has a larger collection. [2]

Picard and the Aldine Press

Some of Picard's bindings are on books in the celebrated editions of the classics by the Aldine Press of Venice. The press had been founded in 1494, and after the death of its founder, Aldus Manutius, in 1515, his family continued to run the business. As well as binding some of the books, Picard appears to have had a more direct connection with this press, as a man called Jean Picard managed its Parisian agency in the 1540s, selling books on commission. Not all sources agree that the bookseller can be assumed to be the same person as the bookbinder, although the possibility that he was the same person is obvious.

The bookseller Picard's premises were identified by the sign of the dolphin and anchor, the emblem of the Aldine Press. They were in the Rue Saint-Jacques, a street in the Latin Quarter, which was a centre of the book trade. [3] In 1547 he encountered financial problems and fled his creditors. The Aldine Press then appointed a printer called Le Riche as its new agent. Le Riche was replaced after a couple of years by the bookbinder Gomar Estienne, who had been working at the royal bindery, the so-called Atelier de Fontainebleau. Estienne appears to have acquired some of the bookbinding tools used by Picard.

Picard designs

Picard is associated with a decorative style for which the French term is entrelacs géométriques. This style, which was favoured by Grolier, has interlaced designs which can be described as strapwork or interlaced ribbons. [2] He also worked in other styles. [1]

Related Research Articles

Bibliothèque nationale de France National Library of France

The Bibliothèque nationale de France is the national library of France, located in Paris. It is the national repository of all that is published in France and also holds extensive historical collections.

Jean Grolier de Servières

Jean Grolier de Servières, viscount d'Aguisy was Treasurer-General of France and a famous bibliophile. As a book collector, Grolier is known in particular for his patronage of the Aldine Press, and his love of richly decorated bookbindings.

Treasure binding

A treasure binding or jewelled bookbinding is a luxurious book cover using metalwork in gold or silver, jewels, or ivory, perhaps in addition to more usual bookbinding material for book-covers such as leather, velvet, or other cloth. The actual bookbinding technique is the same as for other medieval books, with the folios, normally of vellum, stitched together and bound to wooden cover boards. The metal furnishings of the treasure binding are then fixed, normally by tacks, onto these boards. Treasure bindings appear to have existed from at least Late Antiquity, though there are no surviving examples from so early, and Early Medieval examples are very rare. They were less used by the end of the Middle Ages, but a few continued to be produced in the West even up to the present day, and many more in areas where Eastern Orthodoxy predominated. The bindings were mainly used on grand illuminated manuscripts, especially gospel books designed for the altar and use in church services, rather than study in the library.

Anthropodermic bibliopegy Binding books in human skin

Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin. As of May 2019, The Anthropodermic Book Project has examined 31 out of 50 books in public institutions supposed to have anthropodermic bindings, of which 18 have been confirmed as human and 13 have been demonstrated to be animal leather instead.

Bindery

Bindery refers to a studio, workshop or factory where sheets of (usually) paper are fastened together to make books, but also where gold and other decorative elements are added to the exterior of books, where boxes or slipcases for books are made and where the restoration of books is carried out.

Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse German typographer

Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse was a German book-binder, calligrapher and typographer.

Samuel Mearne

Samuel Mearne was an English Restoration bookbinder and publisher whose work is considered a high point of pre-industrial bookbinding. He and his sons, Charles and Samuel Jr., were one of the group referred to by historians as the Queens' Binder.

Bookbinding Process of assembling a book

Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of paper sheets that are folded together into sections called signatures or sometimes left as a stack of individual sheets. Several signatures are then bound together along one edge with a thick needle and sturdy thread. Alternative methods of binding that are cheaper but less permanent include loose-leaf rings, individual screw posts or binding posts, twin loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs. For protection, the bound stack is either wrapped in a flexible cover or attached to stiff boards. Finally, an attractive cover is adhered to the boards, including identifying information and decoration. Book artists or specialists in book decoration can also greatly enhance a book's content by creating book-like objects with artistic merit of exceptional quality.

Sangorski & Sutcliffe

Sangorski & Sutcliffe is a firm of bookbinders established in London in 1901. It is considered to be one of the most important bookbinding companies of the 20th century, famous for its luxurious jeweled bindings that used real gold and precious stones in their book covers.

Daniel Gibson Knowlton was an American classicist bookbinder at Brown University. Knowlton was the nephew of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson and a descendant of Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford.

Book rebinding

Book rebinding is the renewal or replacement of the cover of a book. Typically, this requires restitching or renewal of the glue which holds the pages in place.

Thomas Mahieu, also known as Thomas Maiolus, was a French courtier and bibliophile with a special interest in decorative bookbindings.

Edith Diehl

Edith Diehl was an American bookbinder and author of Bookbinding, its Background and Technique, a classic text and manual on the history and craft of bookbinding in two volumes. In 1947, in recognition of her accomplishments, Diehl was made an Honorary Life Member of the Guild of Book Workers.

Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff

Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff was America's first female bookbinder and printmaker.

Doublure (bookbinding) Ornamental linings on the inside of a book

Doublures are ornamental linings on the inside of a book. Doublures are protected from wear, compared to the outside of a book, and thus offer bookbinders scope for elaborate decoration.

Claude de Picques was an influential French bookbinder. He was closely connected with the court of King Henry II of France, serving as the personal bookbinder to Queen Catherine de' Medici from 1553 and as the personal bookbinder to the King himself from 1556 to 1574. He is thought also to have been one of the binders who worked for Thomas Mahieu.

The Guild of Women-Binders was a British organization founded to promote and distribute the work of women bookbinders at the turn of the 20th century. It was founded by Frank (Francis) Karslake in 1898, and disbanded in 1904. It helped sell bindings produced by women binders already practicing, and instituted training programs to teach other women.

Annie S. Macdonald (1849-1924) was an artistic bookbinder from Scotland, active in the 1890s and the early 20th century. She was known for her study of old binding techniques, determining how book bindings were created in the medieval era and duplicating the methods used.

Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt (1882-1963) was an American bookbinder and book collector, specializing in botanical literature.

Christine Elizabeth Florence Greenhill was an English bookbinder. She did bookbinding following her encouragement from her sister to enrol on bookbinding classes until the Second World War broke out when she became a full-time air raid warden and thus had little time to do bookbinding. Greenhill returned to bookbinding soon after the war was over and served as honorary secretary of the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders before being elected its president for a single term. The Bodleian Library has held two collections of boxes relating to her life and career in its Libraries Repository since 2009.

References

  1. 1 2 "M. T. Ciceronis de Philosophia". Database of bookbindings. British Library . Retrieved 24 April 2015. (binding dated circa 1540 on book published "In aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani": Venice, 1523)
  2. 1 2 Le Bars, Fabienne (2013). "Picard". Base des reliures numérisées. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
  3. The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance. Angela Nuovo