This blue goatskin cover with its red and green onlays, is tooled in gold to an original design based on an eastern theme. This theme is continued on the turn-ins which are also tooled in gold, this time with green and blue onlays depicting peacock feathers; the central panel of the pastedown is cream watered silk. The binder's gold tooled stamp, "bound by ramage, london", appears towards the lower edge of the right-hand image. In the 19th century binders began to regularly insert an adhesive label or a gold-tooled or ink stamp with their name into the books they bound; prior to this bindings were largely unsigned. John ramage was born in london in 1836. When ramage came out of his apprenticeship in 1856, he took the unusual step for an english binder of going to paris and working under lortic, one of the leading french binders of the day. In 1860 ramage returned to britain and purchased the edinburgh business of alexander banks jnr, stating in the 1861 census returns that he employed 8 men, 3 boys, 6 women and 1 girl. Three years later he moved his business to london, where there was more work. He moved to larger premises in warwick lane in 1870, and from there he went to warwick square and in 1891 to creed lane. After his death in 1911, w. D. And n. M. Ramage, whose names appear in the london directory for 1918, continued the work of the firm, disappearing after 1929, presumably victims of the slump following the stock market crash in new york that year. The firm reproduced the styles of the past, but was also capable of producing outstanding original designs, as shown here. Upper cover and pastedown of charles stuart calverley, ‘flyleaves’ (cambridge: deighton, bell, and co.;london: bell and daldy, 1872). Reng calv fly 1872.
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