But early in the twelfth century, if not before, the Winchester
bookmen turned their attention also to leather binding, and the school
of design which they started, spreading to Durham, London, and Oxford,
did not die out in England until it was ousted by the large panel stamps
introduced from France at the end of the fifteenth. The predominant
feature of these Winchester bindings (of which a fine example from the
library of William Morris recently sold for L180), and of their
successors, is the employment of small stamps, from half an inch to an
inch in size, sometimes circular, more often square or pear-shaped, and
containing figures, grotesques, or purely conventional designs. A
circle, or two half-circles, formed by the repetition of one stamp,
within one or more rectangles formed by others, is perhaps the commonest
scheme of decoration, but it is the characteristic of these bindings, as
of the finest in gold tooling, that by the repetition of a few small
patterns an endless variety of designs could be built up. The British
Museum possesses a few good examples of this stamp-work, but the finest
collections of them are in the Cathedral libraries at Durham and
Hereford. Any one, however, who is interested in this work can easily
acquaint himself with it by consulting the unique collection of rubbings
carefully taken by Mr.
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