Das ganze Neue Testament unsers Herzen und Heilands Jesu Christi, recht grundlich nach der Griechischen Haubt-Sprache verteutschet, mit jeder Capitel kurtzen Summarien und dero richtigen Abtheilungen; von neuem mit Fleiss wiederum übersehen [bound with] Die CL. Psalmen Davids

the Psalms translated by Ambrosius Lobwasser

Zurich: David Gessner the Younger, 1738

272; 192, [16]; 64 p. + [1] plate | 8vo | A-R^8; A-M^8 [cross]^8; A-D^8 | 163 x 86 mm

One of many New Testaments issued by David Gessner, junior and senior both, accompanied by the Psalms (with musical notation) and a Kleine Bibel (a psalter without musical notation). The three pieces share the same imprint and are sometimes (though not always) found together. In North America, we find one other copy of this particular edition (Columbia University, without the Psalms and Kleine Bibel). ¶ In a MOST EXTRAORDINARY CONTEMPORARY BINDING: not silver, not brass, but STEEL WORKED IN AN OPEN STYLE—cut, pierced, ajouré, pick your term—ON A BLACK VELVET GROUND AND WITH BLACK BRONZE VARNISH ENDPAPERS. We wonder if this might have been intended as a somber binding, often meant as "an expression of mourning or as a Lenten observance" (White). The production of such a binding may have memorialized a departed loved one, or might sometimes have marked membership in a confraternity of penitents. They commonly manifest as bindings of black leather with relatively subdued decoration (if decorated at all), but our black velvet and black endpapers strike a similar note. Somber bindings date to the 16th century, at least in France, an early example of which was bound in black velvet and tooled with tears. Silver tooling on black leather wasn't unusual with somber bindings, a palette our steel on black velvet would have readily matched. Fabienne Le Bars found that plain white endpapers took on a more thematically appropriate appearance later in the 17th century, namely black and gray tones.  ¶ The literature is almost entirely silent on the issue of ferrous metals used for bookbinding. Indices of standard surveys and essay collections leave us grasping at straws (Julia Miller's Books Will Speak Plain, Mirjam Foot's Eloquent Witnesses, J.A. Szirmai's Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding, to start). Wolfgang Mejer's 1925 Bibliographie der Buchbindereiliteratur mentions an "Einbande aus Eisenblech" article from the 1887 volume of Archiv. f. Buchgew., which we've been unable to locate. Etherington and Roberts offer only the briefest statement on the subject. Their complete entry for iron bindings: "Bookbindings, usually of German origin, which have covers of iron, cast in the form of grillwork composed of bars and scrolls and riveted onto the boards. The style was also employed in England in the 19th century." The description fails to capture our specimen, which certainly looks more like engraved steel than cast iron. ¶ We've seen ourselves one or two large antiphonals with iron straps across the boards, and we expect ferrous clasps and furniture must have been used occasionally (and obviously chains). But we've traced only four other early bindings in ferrous metal. One is on a 15th-century Book of Hours that belonged to Jacques Coeur, "in a steel binding [reliure en acier], engraved with the greatest finesse and with religious subjects" (L'artiste). Another appeared in the 1903 Grolier Club Exhibition of Silver, Embroidered and Curious Bookbindings (#98: "iron binding, engraved"). The remaining two—steel yourself for this—are on Gessner New Testaments, raising the very strong possibility that the publisher had some role in their production. One is on a 1740 edition, "cut and pierced steel binding, with clasps," from a Sotheby, Wilkinson, & Hodge sale on 27 March 1911 (lot 13). Gessner isn't named, but it's a Zurich New Testament, and the assumption seems safe given the second example: another 1738 edition, same as ours, in a nearly identical steel binding. We first find it in the 1923 Anderson Galleries sale of Brooklyn collector Phoebe Boyle. It then turns up at Parke Bernet in 1940, Parke Bernet again in 1955 (Saul Cohn Collection), and then Christie's in 2006 (Cornelius J. Hauck Collection; "A fine rococo bookbinding crafted out of steel"). We find nothing like these in the Folger bindings database. Acier and fer turn up nothing relevant in the BnF database. The British Library database was still down at time of cataloging, but there's nothing like it in v. 2 and 3 of The Henry Davis Gift. We don't mean this to be anything like a complete census—others must be out there, perhaps in libraries holding similar Gessner New Testaments—but it does underscore their exceptional scarcity. ¶ An extraordinary display of an unconventional binding material, and one that must have been very difficult to work. Probably the most metal binding you will ever see, and capable of mopping the floor with any silver binding you place before it.

CONDITION: Bound entirely in openwork engraved steel over black velvet, including large spine endcaps. Each cover is assembled from nine separate steel pieces: four along each side, which wrap around the board edges and onto the turn-ins; a large center piece; and four small pieces occupying the corners between the center and edge pieces. The spine and endcaps adorned with heavy spiked studs, smaller rounded nails on the covers. Bronze varnish papers generally antedate brocade, and the geometric strapwork coursing through our foliage is characteristic of earlier brocade papers, all bolstering the case for a contemporary binding (as if the two other examples on Gessner New Testaments weren't enough). The New Testament and Psalms each with an additional engraved title page. ¶ A little marginal tearing in the first fifty pages, apparently the result of an aggressive upper clasp. At some point recased, later cloth visible at the hinges; most of the velvet fluff worn away; both clasps broken away, one still loosely present.

REFERENCES: This edition not in VD18 or Darlow and Moule ¶ Eric Marshall White, Six Centuries of Master Bookbinding at Bridwell Library (2006), p. 65 (cited above, discussing 17c English somber bindings); Fabienne Le Bars, "'Miserere mei Deus...': Reliures funèbres et macabres en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle," Le livre & la mort: XIVe-XVIIIe siècle (2019), p. 143 (for 16c French black velvet somber binding), 152 (somber bindings belonging to penitents), 164 (on somber endpapers); Julia Miller, Books Will Speak Plain (2010), p. 240 (somber bindings were "usually acquired upon a death in a family"); L'artiste Nouvelle série (1859), v. 6, p. 32; Book-Auction Records (London, 1911), p. 296; The Magnificent Library of the Late Mrs. Phoebe A.D. Boyle (Anderson Galleries, 1923), p. 11, lot 36 ("12mo, old velvet, covered with engraved and filigree steel binding, spattered with studs, and clasp (one only)"); Exhibition of Silver, Embroidered and Curious Bookbindings (Grolier Club, 1903), p. 38, #98; Christie's, The History of the Book: The Cornelius J. Hauck Collection (2006), p. 426, #362

Item #692