Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Bookbinders and Pizza Cutters

I was given this wood engraving of a bookbinder years ago, and always wondered where it was from as it had obviously been removed from a book... In the course of cleaning up, actually took it out of the frame, scanned it, and searched on Google Images using the scan. Great tool for IDing things or at least narrowing them down... In this case, the image was used on several blogs, most not attributing it to anything, including those of special collections type libraries. Alas...

My copy. Where did it come from...?

Image is from the 1824 edition of The Book of English Trades. There were numerous editions of this text with differing illustrations for the trades, and a varying selection of trades. HathiTrust has many of these editions online, and by comparing the image and where it appears was able to conclude it was from the 1824 edition because the image was on the verso facing the text. The 1827 edition has it on the other side... In the 1818 edition a different bookbinder faces the other way.

1824, position and image match my copy.

1827, same image, but on facing page.

1818, different binder facing in opposite direction.
The number of rolls on the rack in the background varies, too.

And, on the subject of racks of rolls, and because it's past lunchtime, here a picture of "pizza cutters" I recently added to my collection...

"Pizza cutters"

Verso of "Pizza cutters"

Lunch...

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