PBA Galleries

[8], 54 pp. With 9 mounted albumen photographs by J. A. Spencer. (4to) 28.6x22 cm (11¼x8¾"), leather-backed decorative boards. First Edition.

A very early use of photographs to illustrate a collection. The ivories represent European work of the 6th-14th centuries, illustrated in a series of nicely-reproduced albumen prints of varied size. When the Society began selling casts of the originals they gave a booklet describing them to each purchaser. The author comments that the chief cause of a delay in publishing the volume was the time required to make the photographic prints, but that the Council trusted that "these illustrations will be regarded as not unworthy of the approbation of the Society." Also the first edition of the first book to include a photograph of a bookbinding. Institutional bookplate with a few rubber stamps.

Three of the plates are photographs of bindings made of ivory, one in the Bibliothèque Nationale, one in Milan Cathedral Library, and one in a private collection. The text also records the existence and location of several other ivory-carved book bindings. Gernsheim - Incunabula of British Photographic Literature, no. 51.