The Details:
John Ratcliff. Bookbinding, Boston, ca. 1670, on: Nathaniel Morton. New-Englands Memorial or, a Brief Relation of the most Memorable and Remarkable Passages of the Providence of God … Cambridge, Massachusetts: Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson for John Usher, 1669. [catalog record]
Purchased from the Papantonio estate as the gift of Frank L. Harrington, 1979.
The Story:
This earliest known extra-gilt American binding was the keystone of Michael Papantonio’s collection of early American bookbindings. It first came to his attention in a 1950 auction in London, where Papantonio was outbid by the Librarian of Cambridge University; fortunately, the volume came back on the market in 1963. In 1972, Papantonio’s collection was the focus of the seminal exhibition, Early American Bookbindings from the Collection of Michael Papantonio.
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