- The Arcadian Library: Bindings and Provenance ed. by Giles Mandelbrote and Willem De Bruijn
The arcadian library, a private family library established to show the historic influences of the Levant upon Europe, was formed over three decades, beginning in the 1980s. Its aim to promote this cultural transfer through exhibitions and publications has resulted in two exhibition catalogues and a series of eight studies, among which is a survey of the library’s contents by Alastair Hamilton, The Arcadian Library: Western Appreciation of Arab and Islamic Civilization (2011). This lavishly produced and fully illustrated volume of essays, edited by Giles Mandelbrote and Willem de Bruijn, number nine in this series, focuses on various aspects of provenance and bookbinding.
Giles Mandelbrote, who wrote the introduction, also deals with earlier British owners of books in the library, and Alastair Hamilton covers those with a foreign provenance. Both essays provide a great many illustrations of book labels, armorial book plates and armorial binding stamps, which will be a lasting source for future identification of ownership, one unfortunate slip, illustrating the same coat of arms with different attributions (Mandelbrote, fig. 15: correct; Hamilton, fig. 50: incorrect), notwithstanding. Many of the books came from the private library of Şefik E. Atabey, a merchant from Istanbul who collected mainly while living in Paris and London, and many were acquired through Bernard Quaritch Ltd. Giles Mandelbrote’s well-researched essay starts with the great British collectors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Richard Heber, Sir Thomas Phillipps, and members of the Christie-Miller family. A number of lesser-known earlier collectors, whose interest in the middle east and the Islamic world led them to collect books on these subjects, often illustrated, are listed, and many of the books mentioned come from aristocratic, country-house, scholars’, and travellers’ libraries. An interesting section on books from institutional libraries and one on marginal annotations conclude this [End Page 354] overview which shows the role all these collectors have played in the history of the relationship between Europe and the middle east.
The books discussed by Alastair Hamilton come from a very wide geographical area, and were collected over a period of about 500 years. Several come from former royal libraries, from aristocratic collections, from courtiers, churchmen, warriors, politicians, and merchants. Among these are many well-known bibliophiles, such as Pierre Séguier, the marquis de Ménars, and members of the Rochefoucauld family. Quite a few were owned by women, the Duchesse de Berry among them. There are books from German monastic libraries, as well as from famous German book collectors, such as the Fuggers and Hans Fürstenberg. Collectors in Russia, Poland, Switzerland, and Scandinavia all possessed books about the Levant. Italian and Spanish collectors include Cardinal Leopold de Medici, Crevenna and Gomez de la Cortina, whose collections are now scattered over many large European libraries. Books with marginal annotations made by scholar-owners are often the most interesting and tell us more than mere bookplates or armorial stamps. Many of these scholars were orientalists, and two books, both editions by the Dutch Arabist, Thomas Erpenius, show this well. Erpenius’s edition of the Arabic Proverbs (Leiden, 1614) was presented to the English Arabic scholar, William Bedwell (also mentioned by Giles Mandelbrote), while Erpenius’s edition of the Syriac Psalter (Leiden, 1625) was owned successively by Séguier and Jean-Jacques Charron, marquis de Ménars, and has numerous annotations by the Anglo-Dutch Hebraist, Arnold Boate. Both English and foreign provenances of books in the Arcadian library show quite clearly the wide interest European rulers, scholars and travellers had in the Orient and the Ottoman empire.
The next four essays are devoted to various aspects of bookbinding history. Philippa Marks describes the many fine and decorated bindings in the library, grouping them by country of origin. Most come from France and appear to be unrestored and in good condition. A fine...