ry possibly done for him by John
Gibson, who bound the royal books while James was king of Scotland only.
During the reign of Charles I. Nicholas Ferrar founded his curious
establishment at Little Gidding, and there his niece Mary Collet and her
sisters set up a bindery. They made large scrap-books, harmonies of the
Gospels and other parts of the Bible, with illustrations, and bound them
magnificently in velvet stamped in gold and silver. They were taught by
a binder who worked for John and Thomas Buck, printers to the university
of Cambridge, and the Little Gidding stamps are often identical with
Buck's.

Samuel Mearne (d. 1683) was royal binder to Charles II., and invented
the cottage style of decoration, a style which has lasted till the
present day; the Bible on which Edward VII. took the coronation oath was
ornamented in that way. An inner rectangle is run parallel to the edges
of the book, and the upper and lower lines are broken outwards into the
outline of a gable roof. Mearne's work as a binder (Plate, fig. 5) is of
the highest merit. Many of his books have their fore-edge painted in
such a way that the work is invisible when the book is shut, and only
shows when the edges are fanned out.

In France 16th- and 17th-century binding is distinguished by the work of
such masters as Nicholas Eve, who bound the beautiful _Livre des Statuts
et Ordonnances de l'ordre du Benvist Sainct Esprit_ for Henry III.
(Plate, fig. 6); Clovis Eve, who is credited with the invention of the
style known as "fanfare," a delicate tracery over the boards of a book,
filled out with spirals of leafy stems; and Le Gascon, who invented the
dotted work which has been used more or less ever since. Le Gascon
caused his small gilding tools--curves and arabesques--to be scored
across, so that when impressions were made from them a dotted line
showed instead of a right line. Florimond Badier worked in a style very
similar to that of Le Gascon and sometimes signed his work, which Le
Gascon never did. Le Gascon had many imitators, the best and closest
being Poncyn and Magnus, Dutch binders who worked at Amsterdam in the
17th century, and his style has been continuously followed to the
present day.

The bindings of Padeloup le Jeune often have small tickets with his name
upon them; they usually have borders of lace-like gold tooling known as
"dentelle" and are often inlaid. He belonged to a family of binders, all
of whom were excellent workmen, an