Books of Scraps

John Bagford, "Of Booke Binding Ancient" and 'Of Booke Binding Modourne" -- illustrated with inserted bits of leather bindings, specimens of title pages, alphabets, printers' and publishers' devices, maps, specimens of paper, many fragments are the only remaining of books destroyed; other scrapbooks concerning manuscripts by Bagford

Kitto's Bible, extra-illustrated with 30,000 prints, now at the Huntington: http://catalog.huntington.org/record=b1606678~S0

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps

Add MS 65170 at British Library; "CHARLES BURNEY COLLECTION. Vol. IX. Sophocles: Testimonia and fragments, extracted from Brunck's edition; 1788, 1789. Printed extracts pasted into a book and lightly annotated. ff. i+277. 242 x 195mm.Richard Franz Philipp Brunck: Sophocles: Testimoni." Creation Date: 1788-1789. See http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/TourBurnMembra.asp

• both Halliwell-Phillips and Charles Burney were book thiefs

early modern printed fragments used to make limp binding at Add MS 57337*, BL

Alexander Shaw, 18th-century catalogue of tapas cloth containing letterpress-printed pages, followed by cloth samples: https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/alexander-shaws-curious-cloth-catalogue/

Otto Frederick Ege, collection at the Reinecke -- broke apart early modern and medieval books and manuscripts to sell the leaves: http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/press/2015/11/yales-beinecke-library-acquires-trove-of-medieval-manuscripts-that-belonged-to-noted-book-breaker.phtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InThePress-FBC+%28In+The+Press+-+Fine+Books+%26+Collections%29; see his essay "I am a biblioclast," Avocations (March 1938)

= Bagford's Notes on Bookbinding, by Cyril Davenport

"Of booke binding ancient" (Harl. 5910 f 131 a) -- vellum rolls and waxen diptychs; boards, pasteboards, boards made of old ropes, and sewing and headbandings; chained books are condemned

"Of Booke binding modourne" - explains processes of collating, folding, beating the leaves, ruling the books with red; at beginning of Harl 5943 are 20 pgs of thick blue paper, pasted with various speciens of bindings and MS notes; Bagford's handwritten notes on pg 8-9; "some [bindings] may have been added since, but none have been taken away" (126)

John Bagford and His Collections, by W. Y. Fletcher

Bagford -- brought up as a shoemaker; believed to have written "Art of Shoemaking and Historicall Account of Clouthing of ye foot," Harley manuscripts

employed by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Sir Hans Sloane, and John Moore, Bishop of Ely

participated in 1707 in founding of Society of Antiquaries

amassed two great collections: ballads (Bagford Ballads), and collection of title pages, fragments of books, specimens of paper, catalogues, book-plates, drawing, engravings, bindings, advertisements, and various interesting and curious pieces"

was going to write a history of printing; 1707, published "Proposals for printing an Historical Account of that most universally celebrated, as well as useful Art of Typography

this proposal is printed on a half-sheet, with a Life of William Caxton, first printer in the Abbey of Westminster and a list of his books

John Bagford, Bookseller and Antiquary, by Milton McC. Gatch

19c saw Bagford as a biblioclast, "yet balanced scholarship in the present century has found Bagford to be a credible dealer and collector, despite his manifest shortcomings" (150)