Spine title.
Album of 49 photographs mounted onto the leaves of an album.
Collection of 49 photographs taken by amateur photographer and book collector Robert James Sells of the most notable bindings in his collection, with examples ranging from bindings of the French Renaissance to contemporary Art Nouveau. Highlights from the Sells collection included several armorial and emblematic bindings made for popes, cardinals, and kings, and among those photographed for this album are examples of bindings with the arms of Pope Urban VIII, Pope Clement XI, and Pope Innocent XII; as well as the arms of Queen Christina of Sweden and the cipher of Gaston d'Orleans. Also included is a photograph of a binding with a medallion portrait of Henri II, ca. 1556-1559, reproduced in a Théophile Bélin catalog of 1910; a binding with the arms of Jacques-Auguste de Thou and his first wife on a copy of Michael Psellus, In Physicen Aristotelis commentarii (Venice, 1554), now in the Beinecke Library; and a binding by Grolier's Last Binder on a copy of La Sainte Bible (Lyons, 1554), now in the collection of the British Library.