[Illustration: 2--Embroidered Cover for New Testament. London, 1640.]

Abroad there have been made at various times embroidered bindings for
books, but in no country except England has there been any regular
production of them. I have come across a few cases in England of
foreign work, the most important of which I will shortly describe. In
the British Museum is an interesting specimen bound in red satin, and
embroidered with the arms of Felice Peretti, Cardinal de Montalt, who
was afterwards Pope Sixtus V.; the coat-of-arms has a little
coloured silk upon it, but the border and the cardinal's hat with
tassels are all outlined in gold cord. The work is of an elementary
character. The book itself is a beautiful illuminated vellum copy of
Fichet's _Rhetoric_, printed in Paris in 1471, and presented to the then
Pope, Sixtus IV. In the same collection are a few more instances of
Italian embroidered bindings, always heraldic in their main
designs, the workmanship not being of any particular excellence or
character. Perhaps altogether the most interesting Italian work of this
kind was done on books bound for Cardinal York, several of which still
remain, embroidered with his coat-of-arms, one of them being now in the
Royal Library at Windsor. Although the actual workmanship on these books
is foreign, we may perhaps claim them as having been suggested or made
by the order of the English Prince himself, inheriting the liking for
embroidered books from his Stuart ancestors.

French embroidered books are very rare, and I do not know of any
examples in England. Two interesting specimens, at least, are in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, and are described and figured in Bouchot's work
on the artistic bindings in that library. The earlier is on a book of
prayers of the fifteenth century, bound in canvas, and worked with
'tapisserie de soie au petit point,' or as I should call it, tent-, or