Missale Romanum

£6,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

An unrecorded edition of the Roman Missal, sumptuously bound in a piece of recycled, eighteenth-century embroidered silk, possibly cut from ecclesiastical cloth or vestments. Intertwining green stems bearing sunburst-yellow tulips, red carnations and pink buds, all picked out in silk thread, weave over a striking, vibrant turquoise silk background. An additional tulip spans the length of the spine to crown a crudely-stitched, comical face at the foot. The fabric covering was evidently not purposely produced for this volume; while it sits neatly, the design was not made to fit the dimensions here, and, as noted by specialist Dr. Mary Brooks, the embroidery continues on the fabric used for the turn-ins, which would not be usual for a professionally made cover, for reasons of economy in time and use of materials. The style of the decorative floral design here strongly echoes that used in ecclesiastical textiles, vestments and altar dressings in Italy after the Counter-Reformation and into the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and indicates that this silk binding may well have been repurposed and recycled from ecclesiastical linens. There was an established tradition by the eighteenth century of recycling and reusing holy linens on the Continent and in England; after the Reformation in England, fragments of altar cloths were ‘upcycled’ into domestic furnishings, and within the established Church, full copes and larger textiles were cut up to be reused as vestments. The f

• Year: 1660

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