Giles Mandelbrote & Willem de Brujn, eds, The Arcadian Library : bindings and provenance, Oxford: Arcadian Library in Association with the Oxford University Press, 2014
This large and weighty volume is finally available. Containing 7 papers from a conference held in the Arcadian Library in 2008, is only now on sale - at £120. The essays are:
"Some Earlier British Owners; of Books in the Arcadian Library and their Marks of Ownership and Use" and "Princes, Ministers and Scholars: Some non-English Provenances in the Arcadian Library" by Alistair Hamilton and Giles Mandelbrote
"Three Bindings à la fanfare and the Origins of the Fanfare Style" by Anthony Hobson ;
"Selected European Decorated Bookbindings in the Arcadian Library" by Philippa Marks
"The Ottoman World of Abdallah Zakher: The Bindings of the Melkite Monastery at Shuwayr in the Arcadian Library" by John-Paul Ghobrial
"The Structures and Materials of Commercial Bookbindings in the Arcadian Library" by Nicholas Pickwoad
"Some Decorative Endpapers in the Arcadian Library" by Willem de Bruijn.
To quote from the OUP blurb: "The Arcadian Library, based in London, is one of the finest collections of books reflecting European interest in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Among its c.10,000 volumes are many copies with important provenances and fine bindings. In this companion volume to no. 8 in the series [Studies in the Arcadian library], six distinguished authorities on the history of book-collecting and the ownership and use of books, and the history of bookbinding, deal with significant aspects of the Library's holdings from these varied perspectives. ... The scholarly essays in this volume are complemented by a very large number of specially commissioned photographs, making available a wealth of comparative evidence and new examples of particular bindings, details of decoration, inscriptions and marks of ownership".