One of New York City’s best tourist attractions for book lovers The Grolier Club starts 2024 off with an impressive exhibition detailing the history and aesthetics of fine bookbindings. Judging a Book by Its Cover: Bookbindings from the Collections of The Grolier Club, 1470s-2020 which highlights selections from the Grolier Club’s collection of bindings, largely donated and built by the Club’s members over the course of its 140-year history.

Judging a Book by Its Cover highlights selections from seven centuries of the Grolier Club’s collection of bindings, largely donated and built by the Club’s members over the course of its 140-year history. The exhibition explores the history of decorated bindings, book bindings as three-dimensional art objects, what makes a binding collectible, and the Club’s investment in commissioning fine bindings through the present day. Highlights from the 15th century to the present will be on view, including a silver filigreed and jeweled miniature Book of Hours (1673); a gilt maroon goatskin binding from a Vatican bindery, presented to Cardinal Basadonna (1674); and a bright green silk and floral embroidered binding created by May Morris, daughter of William Morris (ca. 1888). Judging a Book by Its Cover is curated by Grolier Club member H. George Fletcher, the former Astor Director for Special Collections at The New York Public Library and former curator at The Morgan Library & Museum. The accompanying catalogue, written and compiled by Fletcher, will be available from University of Chicago Press in January 2024.

*Photo above from Judging a Book By Its Cover: Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis. Pro quatuor anni temporibus, On: [Book of Hours, Use of Paris. Latin]. A silver filigree miniature binding, Paris, 1673 or later. Paris: Michael Dauplet, 1673. 32mo. 80 ✕ 50 ✕ 20 mm.

On view in the Grolier Club’s ground floor gallery from January 17 through April 13, 2024, the exhibition explores the history of decorated bindings, book bindings as 3D art objects, what makes a binding collectible, and the Club’s investment in commissioning fine bindings through the present day.

More than 100 historic and fine bindings will be on view, ranging from the oldest in the collection, a ca. 1473 pigskin binding with etched brass cornerpieces and central boss on a volume of the works Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War and Ecclesiastical History, to one of the newest bindings, a 2019 free-drawn gilded design in a polychrome palette by Ulrich Widmann, inspired by the text and illustrations in the work Ich bin nur Flamme: Gedichte des Expressionismus by Svato Zapletal.

Judging a Book by Its Cover is curated by Grolier Club member H. George Fletcher, the former Astor Director for Special Collections at The New York Public Library and former Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at The Morgan Library & Museum. The accompanying catalogue, written and compiled by Fletcher, is available from University of Chicago Press in January 2024.

“A principal motivation of the Founders who brought the Grolier Club into existence was to improve the state of fine bookbinding in America,” said Fletcher. “Their practice had been to send their rare books to France for proper treatment, accepting the vagaries of transatlantic shipment as a necessary risk. The development of The Club Bindery and regularly exhibiting bookbindings is a practice that continues at the Grolier Club to the present day.”

The Grolier Club exhibitions are open to the public, free of charge.

Hours:
Monday-Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday: CLOSED

Visit the Grolier Club website for information on in person and virtual tours.