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Since the invention of the printing press, books have changed from massive Latin tomes, the province of the elite, to modern mass-market paperbacks, read by prince and pauper alike. The five hundred fifty years between Gutenberg and Amy Tan (author of The Kitchen God’s Wife, New York Times #1 Bestseller on July 7, 1991) saw changes not just to the inside but also to the outside of books as technology and taste changed. Although the American Numismatic Society does not collect books for their fine bindings, over its 150-year history, the ANS Library has acquired a number of fine bindings. This exhibition showcases some of the finer bindings in the Library’s holdings, from a sixteenth-century alum-tawed pigskin to a late-nineteenth-century binding from an Imperial Russian library.

Grand Duke Georgii Mikhailovich. Monety tsarstvovaniia (= The Corpus of Russian Coins). (12 volumes).
Volumes from the library of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich.
Tipografiia A. Benke, 1888-1914.
Gift of Catherine Bullowa Moore.

Binding: Fine calf leather with colored leather onlays with initials of
Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich.
Inside: Gilt tooling with purple moiré silk doublures.

Other items in this exhibition include:

-- Panvinio, Onofrio. Fasti et triumphi Romanorum a Romulo Rege usque ad Carolum V. Caes. Aug. Venice, 1557.

-- Junius, Hadrian. Nomenclator omnium rerum propris nomina variis linguis explicata indicans : multo quam antea emendatior ac locupletior. Antwerp, 1583.

-- Epitome Emblematvm Panegyricorvm Academiae Altorfinae. Studiosæ Juuentuti propsita. Noriberg (Nuremburg) : Levinus Hulsius, 1602.

-- Vico, Aeneas. Augustarum Imagines aereis formis expressae… Paris, 1619.

-- Orville, Jacques Philippe d'. Sicula quibus Siciliae veteris rudera… Amsterdam, 1764.

To view the complete online exhibit, see: Bound For Glory: Exotic Bindings in the ANS Library Collections (www.numismatics.org/Library/Exhibit3Bindings)