1663 KING JAMES BIBLE, IN STUNNING CONTEMPORARY CLASPED BINDING

(BIBLE). The Holy Bible, Containing the Old Testament and the New. London: John Bill and Christopher Barker, 1663. London: John Bill and Christopher Barker, 1663. Small thick octavo, contemporary full black morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spine and boards with red and citron morocco onlays, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, fore-edge painted with floral motifs, silver clasps; housed in a custom clamshell box. $12,500.

Finely printed 17th-century edition of the King James Bible, in a stunning contemporary morocco-gilt binding with elaborate morocco onlays and gilt designs to boards and spine, with a lovely fore-edge painting and silver clasps, bound by "Owen," whose work is known in only one other example in the collection of the British Museum.

The King James Bible, first published in 1611, is described as "the only literary masterpiece ever to be produced by a committee and was the work of nearly fifty translators… [who] lived at a period when the genius of the language was in full flower." Macaulay praised it as "a book, which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power" (PMM 114). This Bill and Barker edition, complete with the Apocrypha, is set in Roman type in double columns, and embellished with an engraved general title page and occasional woodcut initial letters. Bound with this edition is a contemporary edition of Sternhold and Hopkins' metrical Psalter. The binder of this copy used four principle tools in its production, making it identifiable as being by "Owen," known only from one other example, a signed binding in the Henry Davis Gift collection at the British Library, which uses those same four identical tools. Darlow & Moule 539. Herbert 685. Henry Davis Gift II: 115. Gift notation dated 1864, tipped in early note attributing the binding to the well-known royal binder Samuel Mearne.

Scatterer foxing to text; expert restoration to joints, some dulling to fore-edge painting. A beautiful Bible.