Beginning in 2019, I began a project to identify and document trade bindings (ca. 18th-19th century), bindings with some mark of the binder (tickets, signatures, or stamps), and other bindings of significant aesthetic interest that are currently in the circulating collection of ASU Library. To accomplish this I spent many hours walking the stacks of our various locations – the most efficient way to locate these bindings was through visual inspection; our catalog records often did not include any documentation of the unique nature of these volumes. As I identified bindings of interest, I added their bibliographic information and physical description (including the binder’s name if known) to a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet eventually became an Omeka-S website, where I combined the bibliographic data, bookbinder’s information, and photographs for each binding and its binder’s signature. I also provided as much bibliographic data for each bookbinder that I could locate, including geospatial data for the location of their binderies.
This project is still ongoing, and I continue to update the project website with each new binding that meets my criteria for inclusion in this project.
Bound by Baker & Son. James Baker was an English binder who worked in Clifton, England.
