There are several senses in which a book collector is likely to encounter the term furniture when building a private library. The sense with which most book collectors are likely to be familiar is that of bookshelves, chairs and other items relevant to storing and reading one's books. (For the use of the term in typesetting, see our post of 27 September 2010.)
However, if one collects manuscripts or printed books produced from roughly the 8th-17th centuries, one is just as likely to encounter the term in reference to anything attached to the outside of a book in binding (clasps, bosses, cornerpieces, plaques, chains, staples, etc.) ... to protect the covers from abrasion and as decoration:
The image above, for example, depicts the early 16th century Panis quotidianus, de sanctis. The so-called "Lily binder" has elaborately decorated the title's leather binding with a brass centerpiece, clasps, bosses and cornerpieces. Formerly the property of the monks of Newminster, a Cistercian abbey in Northumberland (UK), the title now resides in the Special Collections division of the Univeristy of Glasgow.
The image below depicts a 15th century blind-tooled goatskin binding on a ca. 1483 printing of St. Augustine's De civitate Dei in the incunabula collection of Princeton University. Note that the brass bosses, centerpiece and cornerpieces are the binding's primary decorative elements:
Such furniture is not always metal. Plaques, for example, often were made of ivory. In the elaborate example below, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the ivory plaque is part of an 11th century jeweled silver binding formerly belonging to the Benedictine nunnery of Santa Cruz de los Serós, which was reputedly founded by Queen Felicia, wife of Sancho V Ramírez (r. 1063–94), king of Aragon and Navarre:
Such furniture is not entirely a thing of the 8th-17th centuries. Deluxe bindings of the modern era also sometimes feature such furniture, witness the extraordinary example below. The goatskin binding features jeweled metal cornerpieces on an 1825 printing of Office de la Quinzaine de Pacques....
Image © The British Library Board
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