Leather bound Books at Country House Library

A Focus on Leatherbound Decorative Books – famous writers and their reading spaces

“The library is an arena of possibility; opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world”.

So said American Poet Laureate, Rita Dove, and here at Country House Library we believe that applies not only to the great public and private libraries of the world, but to your own home collection, whether that’s a single bookcase or a favourite reading room adorned with your treasured collection. We use the word ‘adorned’ purposely. Books aren’t solely a repository of fact and fiction but are often works of art in their own right, representing hours of craftsmanship and bookbinding know-how built up over centuries – in fact, going back to the earliest recorded books of the first millennium. The earliest surviving European bookbinding is the St Cuthbert Gospel of 700AD.

Famous writers, scientists, business magnates, politicians and royalty have collected antique and rare books for centuries, filling their inspirational reading spaces with beautiful examples of the bookbinder’s skill.

Examples include Rudyard Kipling’s stunning ‘Bateman's House’ in East Sussex and Ian Fleming’s romantically named ‘Goldeneye’ in Jamaica. On a more modest scale, the reading and writing ‘huts’ of Roald Dahl in Buckinghamshire or Mark Twain near New York. 

Ernest Hemingway converted the old carriage house on his property in Key West, Florida into a bookish space where he’d enjoy a glass of whisky and a cigar. Dame Agatha Christie based a number of her mysteries and plays on her coastal idyll, Greenway House, overlooking her landscaped gardens and the River Dart in Devon. Virginia Woolf famously said, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” and once her earnings were sufficient, set up a writing lodge and personal library in the grounds of her 16^th century Sussex cottage, ‘Monk's House’.

The point though is not about the opulence of the library or reading space building, but about being in the restful and contemplative company of books. Their subtle colouring and infinite variation of design is akin to being in a gallery of great master paintings.  

Animal hides and leathers, sometimes with raised patterns and coloured tooled designs, have been an integral part of the bookbinding process since those very first days with the aforementioned St Cuthbert’s gospel bound in red-dyed goatskin. The grandest volumes, mainly for use in religious settings, had covers in metalwork called ‘treasure bindings’ and were often studded with precious stones with ivory inlays and panels of gold-leaf. For the modern-day hobby vintage book collector, the most available form of decorative binding is ‘calf binding’ where the whole or part of the outer cover is clad in leather, usually from a calf but can also be from sheep, goat, pigs or aquatic animals such as shark, seal or alligator. The bookbinder’s term of ‘calf binding’ is now more usually known simply as ‘leather bound’. The rich colours, aroma and feel of a leather bound book will grace any home collection and add a touch of literary atmosphere hard to replicate with anything else.

Country House Library boasts an impressive collection of decorative books for your own reading space including not only fine examples of leather bound, but also colour matched, distressed, highly decorative, marbled, and pattern matched. Embellish your own home library and reading space with the infinite palette of colours, patterns and printed ‘architecture’ to be found on our extensive and ever-changing shelves.