502 College & Research Libraries September 2010

t o  t h o s e  w h o  a r e  d e ve l o p i n g  a n y 
type of online library programming. 
—John Repplinger, Willamette University. 

Mirjam M. Foot. The Henry Davis Gift: A 
Collection of Bookbindings. Volume III: A 
Catalogue of South-European Bindings. 
London and New Castle, Del.: The 
British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 
2010. 527p. $125 ISBN: 9780712350549 
(British Library) and 9781584562726 
(Oak Knoll). LC80510312.

It is good to see volume three of Mirjam 
Foot’s excellent contribution to the his-
tory of bookbindings. With it, one of our 
foremost scholars in the field brings to 
a conclusion a project that began more 
than thirty years ago. When Henry Da-
vis deeded his spectacular collection of 
bindings to the then–British Museum 
in 1968, the latter acquired an extraor-
dinary array of specimens from the 12th 
through the mid-20th century. In 1978, 
Foot, who served for many years as Di-
rector of Collections and Preservation in 
the British Library, brought out volume I 
of her planned three-volume set. It was 
titled Studies in the History of Bookbinding, 
and it consisted of a remarkable series 
of short pieces on individual bindings, 
binders, and patrons in the collection. 
For it, Foot chose “those bindings which 
have not previously been the object of 
detailed study or about which new facts 
can be told.” With volume II in 1983, Foot 
brought out the first installment of her 
catalogue proper of the collection, and it 
immediately became a standard reference 
work in the field. As A Catalogue of North-
European Bindings, volume II comprised 
short descriptive entries organized by 
country and accompanied by full-page 
illustrations of most of the bindings.

Volume III takes, for its turf, bind-
ings in the Davis gift from France, Italy, 
Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland (with a 
few outliers from exotic spots like New 
York and Mexico). While the general 

format conforms to that of volume II, in-
dividual entries are more generous, with 
the author paying much more attention 
to structural and decorative features. For 
practitioners as well as scholars, Foot’s 
careful descriptions of binding structures 
will be enormously useful. Indeed, if you 
compare the individual entries in volume 
III with those found in the online British 
Library Database of Bookbindings, you 
will immediately appreciate the value of 
the printed text. While the database has 
many winning features and is a breeze 
to use, it does not carry over the rich tex-
tual descriptions that Foot prepared for 
the present volume. (Perhaps they will 
be added at some point in the future.) 
Each entry contains discrete sections on 
provenance, references, and literature, 
supplemented as appropriate with 
separate notes on tools, decorations, and 
relationships to other described bind-
ings. The only regret I have about this 
volume (as well as about the first two) 
is that illustrations are not in color. I am 
sure that there are good reasons for that 
choice, but it would have been better had 
even a selection been reproduced in color. 
Happily, to get the color versions, you 
can go conveniently to the BL Database 
of Bookbindings.

The Davis collection gathers together 
choice bindings from the high end of 
the trade, and Foot makes clear in her 
introduction that one should not draw 
sweeping conclusions from them. That 
said, there is a wealth of information to 
assimilate here, and it will take years 
for scholars and curators to absorb the 
richness of Foot’s commanding work. 
Few have done more than Foot over her 
distinguished career to make the case for 
the importance of the history of bookbind-
ing to bibliography and the history of the 
book in general. As the capstone of her 
Davis project, the present volume will re-
main an essential and enduring reference 
tool.—Michael Ryan, Columbia University.