The Riviere Bindery was one of the most notable and prolific shops in London's West End from about 1840 through 1939. Many binders who served apprenticeships at Riviere went on to work in other firms or to set up on their own. The bindery turned out vast numbers of leather bindings, and rare book collections are so filled with volumes "BOUND BY RIVIERE & SON" in full goatskin with gilt spines that we have come to regard them as rather commonplace. As the examples here show, however, the finishers at Riviere were capable of marvelous work.
British, twentieth century, Riviere
| Author: | Keats, John, 1795-1821 |
| Title: | Endymion: a poetic romance. |
| Published: | London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 1818 |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 3809.332.14 c.1 |
| Spine height: | 23 cm |
British, twentieth century, Riviere
| Author: | Homer |
| Title: | The Iliads of Homer, prince of poets. |
| Published: | London: Printed by Richard Field for Nathaniell Butter, [1611?] |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 2681.333.611 |
| Spine height: | 30 cm |
British, twentieth century, Riviere
| Author: | Juvenal |
| Title: | Decimus Junius Juvenalis, and Aulus Persius Flaccus, translated and illustrated, as well with sculpture as notes. |
| Published: | Oxford: Printed by W. Downing, for F. Oxlad senior, J. Adams, and F. Oxlad junior, 1673. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | Oversize 2873.2673q |
| Spine height: | 30 cm |
British, twentieth century, Riviere
| Author: | Milton, John, 1608-1674. |
| Title: | Eikonoklastes. |
| Published: | London: Printed by M. Simmons, 1649. |
| Location: | Rare Books: Robert H. Taylor Collection (RHT) |
| Call number: | 17th-414 |
| Spine height: | 18 cm |
In the 1890s, members of the Grolier Club in New York, lamenting the dearth of fine binding in America, established the Club Bindery in an attempt to make available luxury bookbindings that could rival those of Europe. Several European-trained binders were brought to New York to begin work in 1895.
In 1897, Grolier Club member Robert Hoe was instrumental in bringing Leon Maillard to the bindery from France. The temperamental Maillard turned his exceptional finishing skills to the production of wonderful and expensive bindings for Hoe and other collectors.
The Club Bindery was dissolved in 1909. Briefly reincarnated as the Rowfant Bindery in Cleveland, it closed again owing to financial difficulties. Maillard was reduced to selling carpet sweepers, and in 1921 he committed suicide.
American, twentieth century, Club Bindery
| Author: | M¯alik ibn Anas, d. 795. |
| Title: | Bust¯an al-muhaddis¯in. |
| Date: | ca. 1802 |
| Location: | Manuscripts Division |
| Call number: | C0723.304 |
| Spine height: | 23 cm |
American, twentieth century, Club Bindery
| Author: | Suckling, John, Sir, 1609-1642 |
| Title: | Fragmenta aurea. |
| Published: | London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1646. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 3948.7.335 c.2 |
| Spine height: | 20 cm |
American, twentieth century, Club Bindery
| Author: | Lederer, John |
| Title: | The discoveries of John Lederer. |
| Published: | London: Printed by J. C. for Samuel Heyrick, 1672. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 1230.571.11 |
| Spine height: | 18 cm |
American, twentieth century, Club Bindery
| Author: | Omar Khayyam |
| Title: | Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. |
| Published: | New York: The Grolier Club, 1885. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 2472.379.6 |
| Spine height: | 23 cm |
The revival of interest in printing with the hand press that came with the late nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts Movement in England, brought with it a renewed interest in hand bookbinding. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, a friend and associate of William Morris, took up bookbinding in the 1880s and set new standards for design and workmanship that would influence many followers in the succeeding decades. He established the Doves Bindery in 1893, and although he did no more binding himself, he continued to shape many of the binding designs at Doves. William Morris had his own copy of the famous Kelmscott Chaucer bound by the Doves Bindery, and a number of other copies of that book were bound there as well.
British, twentieth century
Binding by Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson.
| Author: | Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892. |
| Title: | In memoriam. |
| Published: | London: Macmillan and Co., 1885. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 3955.349.114 |
| Spine height: | 22 cm |
British, twentieth century
Doves binding on the Kelmscott Chaucer.
| Author: | Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400 |
| Title: | The works of Geoffrey Chaucer, now newly imprinted. |
| Published: | Upper Mall, Hammersmith, England: William Morris, 1896. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | Oversize 3674.1896f c.1 |
| Spine height: | 44 cm |
British, twentieth century
The original publisher's cloth binding on an edition of Rossetti.
| Author: | Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 1830-1894. |
| Title: | Poems. |
| Published: | Boston: Roberts, 1870. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 3913.3 1870 c.2 |
| Spine height: | 18 cm |
British, twentieth century
The same edition of Rossetti in a later Doves binding.
| Author: | Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 1830-1894. |
| Title: | Poems. |
| Published: | Boston: Roberts, 1870 |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 3913.3 1870 c.3 |
| Spine height: | 18 cm |
British, twentieth century
George Fisher bound many books issued by the Gregynog Press in the 1920s and 1930s. This binding, designed by Blair Hughes-Stanton and bound by Fisher, is a wonderful example of the use of simple blind lines to create an elegant and restrained effect.
| Author: | Milton, John |
| Title: | Comus, a mask by John Milton. |
| Published: | Newton, England: Greynog Press, 1931. |
| Location: | Rare Books: Graphic Arts |
| Call number: | Greynog 1931 |
| Spine height: | 29 cm |
American, twentieth century
Alfred de Sauty worked as a finisher at the Riviere bindery, among other shops and schools in England, during the early decades of the twentieth century. After arriving in America, he managed the bindery at R. R. Donnelly in Chicago.
| Author: | Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822 |
| Title: | Rosalind and Helen: a modern eclogue ; with other poems. |
| Published: | London: Printed for C. and J. Ollier, 1819. |
| Location: | Rare Books (Ex) |
| Call number: | 3928.378.11 c.2 |
| Spine height: | 23 cm |
American, twentieth century
The little-known Otto Zahn came to the United States from Europe in the late nineteenth century, and eventually settled in Memphis, establishing the Zahn Bindery. Virtually all Zahn bindings seem to be in private collections; this is the only one at Princeton.
| Author: | Ruskin, John, 1819-1900. |
| Title: | The seven lamps of architecture. |
| Edition: | New edition. |
| Published: | Sunnyside, Ornington, England: G. Allen, 1880. |
| Location: | Rare Books: Graphic Arts |
| Call number: | Bindings |
| Spine height: | 28 cm |
American, twentieth century
Binding by Henry Stikeman, an American binder who rose to preeminence in New York in the 1890s.
| Author: | Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683. |
| Title: | The complete angler. |
| Published: | Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1844 |
| Location: | Rare Books: Kenneth H. Rockey Angling Collection (ExRockey) |
| Call number: | 3975.5.326.844.13 |
| Spine height: | 22 cm |