A Cambridge Binding

Above: Origen, Origenis Adamantii Operum tomi duo priores cum tabulis & indice generali proxime sequetibus, Parisiis: Venundatur cum reliquis Ioanni Paruo: Jodoco Badio: et Conrado Resch, 1512. Binding by Nicholas Spierinck, c.1520. Special Collections, Baillieu Library.

This signed Cambridge binding by Nicholas Spierinck was purchased by the Library’s Special Collections in 2008. The book itself is an early printing of the two (of four) of Origen’s Works, titled Origenis Adamantii Operum tomi duo priores cum tabulis & indice generali proxime sequetibus, published in 1512. Spierinck’s binding is full calf over wooden boards, with blind-stamped patterns of dragon, wyverns and griffins, and includes his monogram NS. There are remnants on the back cover of the hand–decorated brass clasps that Spierinck used on his bindings.

Nicholas Spierinck went to England from Belgium in the early 1500s and was binding important works by 1515. In 1534, Spierinck and two other bookbinders became the first official University Printers and Stationers at Cambridge. Spierinck’s bindings were the last in the medieval style at Cambridge, and our binding is one of the finest known examples of his bindings and the only known one in Australia. The Ivy May Pendlebury Bequest made the purchase possible.

A Paradise of Flowers

Frontispiece from John Parkinson, Paradisi in sole: Paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp …, [London]: printed by Humfrey Lownes and Robert Young at the signe of the Starre on Bread-Street Hill, 1629. Special Collections, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.

The book from which this image comes is an example of the development of natural history illustration. It was one of the first English books to show attractive images of flowers and plants, rather than showing diagrams of plants as medicinal items.