Baliverneries ou Contes nouveaux d'Eutrapel, autrement dit Leon Ladulfi.

[But London: Chiswick Press,, 1815]. With gilt foil endpapers First Chiswick Press edition, one of 100 copies, this copy in a charming pastiche Duodo binding. The intricate design of leafy ovals and flowers pays homage to the Parisian bindings made for Pietro Duodo (1554-1611), the Venetian ambassador to France from 1594 to 1597. The gilt foil endpapers are a lavish addition to the style and a generally uncommon feature. Duodo's library was uniformly bound in fanfare style, each binding colour-coded by subject: literature works in olive morocco (as here), theology, philosophy, and history in red, and medical titles in citron. Unexpectedly recalled to Venice in 1597, Duodo left the books in Paris, where they remained untouched until rediscovered during the French Revolution. The collection was brought to England and dispersed; Charles Lewis was the first British binder to produce imitations to meet the demand for Duodo's charming style. This is the only known example by Charles Smith, likely the London bookbinder Samuel Charles Smith active between 1813 and around 1828. Baliverneries is a collection of rustic tales in Rabelais's style published in 1548, describing country life in Renaissance Brittany through the adventures of the impertinent protagonist Eutrapel. Provenance: offered by Maggs, Bookbinding in the British Isles, cat. 1212, vol. II, no. 214 - Stephen C. Massey. Small octavo (128 x 76 mm), pp. x, [1], xii, 100, [2]. Contemporary olive morocco by Charles Smith, smooth spine elaborately tooled in gilt, red morocco label, panels tooled in gilt with border of palm fronds, branches, leaves and stars, central panel with all-over pattern of ovals formed by laurel branches, each enclosing different flowers, board edges tooled in gilt, blue morocco doublures ruled in gilt, gold foil free endpapers, edges gilt, brown silk bookmarker. Gilt vibrant, near-mirror shine to gilt foil endpapers, contents clean. A handsomely bound copy. Maggs, Bookbinding in the British Isles 1212, II, 214. On Samuel Charles Smith, see Howe, London Bookbinders, p. 87.