Common Prayers, Uncommon Binding

by Stephen J. Gertz

This stunning, c. 1853, binding by Hayday of London of an 1840 edition of The Book of Common Prayer is in full brown smooth-grained Turkey morocco over beveled boards, with a single fillet framing an eye-catching panel of onlaid red, green (the quadrants, their color not, alas, fully visible due to lighting), and black morocco with gilt tooling and central cross of gilt-tooled inlaid orange morocco to both sides.

The spine compartments possess deep crimson and orange labels and are decorated in gilt with inlaid red and orange calf crosses. Fine details include extravagantly gilt-tooled dentelles, gilt-tooled edges, and all edges gilt and gauffered.

A cross is not an unusual decorative binding design for finely bound copies of The Book of Common Prayer, yet the design, while based upon earlier  ecclesiastical bindings, is a particularly handsome and contemporary mosaic. It suggests that it was bound for a man of means.

One of the most distinctive and unusual aspects of this binding is the tortoise shell effect to the Turkey morocco most visible along the top edge of the upper board. It's unclear whether the pattern is an attractive blemish in the skin itself or the result of a chemical wash. I've seen countless bindings in calf with various stain-effects (mottled, tree, rainbow, etc.) but I've never seen  morocco  leather quite like this with such a fine grain and unusual varigration.

James Hayday, (1796–1872), "bookbinder, was born in London. Of his parents, nothing is known. He was apprenticed to Charles Marchant, vellum binder, 12 Old Gloucester Street, Queen Square, London, and then for some time worked as a journeyman commencing business in a very humble way. In 1825 he became one of the auditors of the Journeymen Bookbinders' Trade Society. In 1833 he rented premises at 31 Little Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he continued until his retirement in 1861…

Gauffered fore-edge.

"Constant opening of traditionally bound books disfigured the grain of the leather, and to obviate this Hayday introduced the cross or pin-headed grain known as Turkey morocco. In his own binding he sewed the books fully along every sheet, a technique that caused extra thickness that Hayday remedied by sewing with silk, rather than thread. Also, in order to equalize the thickness he rounded the fore edges more than was customary. To make the back tight he dispensed with the ordinary backing of paper, and fastened the leather cover down to the back.

"Works bound by Hayday became famous and increased in monetary value. Edward Gardner of the Oxford Warehouse, 7 Paternoster Row, London, secured Hayday's services for the Oxford University Press. William Pickering, bookseller, of 57 Chancery Lane, also introduced him to many wealthy patrons…A number of his bindings are in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London" (Oxford Online Dictionary of National Biography).

Between 1837-and 1838 the Hayday bindery employed between thirty and forty people including ten finishers. James Hayday's retirement in 1861 had nothing to do with a desire for a life of ease after a life of toil. He went bankrupt. He then partnered with William Mansell until he finally retired in 1869.

Close-up of gauffering, with gilt-tooled edge.

The first manual of worship in English for any religion. The Book of Common Prayer is the key and most important volume of the Church of England, uniting all Churchgoers within a common liturgy in English, and was so prior to the publication of the Church's King James translation of the Bible in 1611. It has been in print without interruption since its introduction in 1549. It was revised in 1552 and mildly amended a hundred years later, in 1662, 350 years ago.

Dentelle.

It is, for the most part, the work and language of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury 1533-1556 and a leader of the Reformation in England, who based it upon the centuries old Latin liturgy of the English Catholic Church and gracefully simplified the language so that it would be understood by all no matter their degree of literacy. It is, what the Oxford historian and author of A History of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch, has called, “one of a handful of texts to have decided the future of a world language.”

Here bound in a  masterful manner suitable for worship.

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[HAYDAY, bindery]. [CHURCH OF ENGLAND]. The Book of Common Prayer, And Administration of the Sacraments. And Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the United Church of England and Ireland; Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, Pointed as They are to be Sung or Said in Churches; and the Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Oxford: Printed at the University Press by Samuel Collingwood and Co., 1840.

Small octavo (5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in; 140 x 80 mm). Unpaginated.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Rare Book That Turned Elizabeth I into Queen of Heaven

Yesterday, Queen of England. Today, Mother of God.

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1578 an astonishing book was published in England, astonishing particularly if you were a Catholic. The volume, A Booke of Christian Prayers, contained a frontispiece portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, Britain’s reigning monarch, as the new Queen of Heaven, knocking Mary off the throne.

Further, the book, gloriously decorated with elaborate historiated borders, had illustrations within those borders that might trouble Christians of the Roman stripe. Some border details are distinctly anti-Papist.

The portrait had appeared in the first edition of 1569 yet this new edition was so different in content and appearance that the two editions (both commonly known as Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book) are considered to be separate works. With its historiated borders, their content, as well as the portrait of Elizabeth I, the 1578 is a magnificent and dramatically iconoclastic volume.

This famous woodcut portrait, possibly by lady-in-waiting and court painter Levina Teerlinc,  on the verso of the title-page depicts Elizabeth at prayer. "In an outstanding example of iconoclasm, Elizabeth receives the place of honor  in collections of prayers comparable to the Horae, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary once reigned supreme as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven" (King, Tudor Royal Iconography, p. 114). A prayer of Solomon which forms the epigraph suggests that the queen has supplanted the sage biblical king as wise governor who has re-established the Lord's Temple by imposing a Protestant settlement and bringing peace to Britannia. Down with the Church of Rome; up with the Church of England.

The striking woodcut borders, designed in the manner of Holbein and Dürer, give visual life to the prayers. Arranged in seven successive sections, each follows a different theme in the canon of Elizabethan popular devotional iconography: the life of Christ; the personifications of Christian virtues and vices; the action of Christian virtues in daily life; personifications of the senses; the the Apocalypse; the Dance of Death, and, finally, various elements of Christian eschatology.

The woodcuts are signed, and in three forms: the first series by an unidentified "C.I." and the Dance of Death with a "G" except for the penultimate signed "CT." Artist "G" may be Marcus Gheeraerts the younger.

What makes this book truly remarkable is its place within English printing history. At a time when the English printing industry was distinctly less sophisticated than that on the Continent, this is one of the few English books of the sixteenth century that can proudly take its place amongst the finest examples of contemporary European printing. As such, the book is a magnificent tribute to publisher John Daye's typographical skills.

"Richard Day (b. 1552, d. in or before 1606), printer and Church of England clergyman, was born at Aldersgate, London, on 21 December 1552, the son of the printer John Day (1521/2–1584)... In 1576 Day assisted his father in the printing of, and wrote some of the prefixed verses to, the third edition of Foxe's Actes and Monuments. The following year, on 28 August 1577, he was named as co-patentee when his father secured the renewal of a lucrative patent for the printing of a number of works including the Psalms in metre and the ABC with Little Catechism, although it appears that Richard may have gained his half-share by misleading his father about the terms of the grant.

"Day entered his first book in the company's registers on 28 May 1578, his own translation of John Foxe's Christ Jesus Triumphant. The work was followed by a newly prefaced edition of A Booke of Christian Prayers, Collected out of the Auncient Writers, otherwise known as Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book. He also variously edited, translated, registered, and printed a handful of books over the next two years. However, his father evidently did not allow him to produce any works covered by the 1577 patent, as Richard took to pirating the little catechism and the metrical Psalms. As a result, in 1580 his father, then master of the Stationers' Company, assisted by the company's wardens, entered Richard's premises and took from him the bulk of his books, type, and press. No books were issued by Richard Day after this event.

"Despite an attempt by his father in his final years to revoke Richard Day's rights to the 1577 patent, the patent continued in Richard's name until at least 1604 although all printing for it was done by five nominated assigns. Richard died some time before 13 April 1606..." (DNB).

This edition exists in two states. The most readily available, albeit still quite rare, has the Preface signed “R.D.” In the scarcer variant the Preface is signed “Richard Daye.”

“As a repository of traditional iconographical material A Booke of Christian Prayers is unique among publications of the Elizabethan period” (Chew, The Iconography of “A Booke of Christian Prayers"(1578). Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, p. 293).

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DAYE, Richard. A Booke of Christian Prayers collected out of the auncie[n]t writers, and best learned in our tyme, worthy to be read with an earnest mynde of all Christians, in these daungerous and troublesome dayes, that God for Christes sake will yet still be mercyfull unto us. London: John Daye, 1578.

First edition, the rare variant with Preface signed "Richard Daye,"  Octavo.  [12], [274], [1], [3 as index.], [1, colophon] pp., the pages numbered as 137 leaves. Woodcut engraved title page, woodcut frontispiece portrait of Elizabeth Regina at prayer.  Magnificent,  elaborately historiated woodcut borders designed after Holbein, Dürer, and contemporaries. Text in Roman and Black Letter.

ESTC 6429. Lowndes 1496.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books. Collectors may inquire here.

A tip o' the hat to Peter Harrington.
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