Xenophon

These too are “empty” fanfare bindings produced by the Atelier au Vase. Laubespine commissioned them for this two-volume edition of the Greek historian Xenophon, a masterwork of the scholarprinter Henri II Estienne, who collated the text himself and
printed it with the famous Greek types cut by Claude Garamond. Both volumes could be obtained separately should one prefer to have Xenophon only in Greek or only in Latin. They were shelved separately in the Laubespine-Villeroy library and parted ways after it was dispersed—but they were reunited by the Wormsley Library, which acquired first the Greek text and then the Latin text in 2006 when, by a stroke of luck, it came up for sale at auction.

Xenophon (ca. 428/27–ca. 354 BCE)
Omnia quae extant opera (Complete Works), 2 vols.
Geneva: Henri II Estienne, 1561
The Wormsely Library
Photography by Andrew Smart of A.C.Cooper Ltd, London