Many of the historic volumes in the Lillian Goldman Law Library are significant not only for their texts, but for their extraordinary bindings. Over thirty of these are featured in this exhibition; selected for their beauty, craftsmanship, functionality, and historical significance.
"These bookbindings tell stories about the people who owned them, read them, or sold them at some point in their long histories," write Laird and Widener. "The bindings reflect the time and place of their creation, and reveal attitudes about the legal texts they continue to protect. They also illustrate chapters in the history of book binding."
The examples date from the Middle Ages to the late nineteenth century, and from across Europe and the Americas. They include bindings prepared for students, lawyers, public officials, noblemen, wealthy magnates, a book collector, an Italian cardinal, a chained library in England, the tourist trade in China, the Queen Regent of Spain, the English diarist John Evelyn, and a palace of the Tsar of Russia.
"Legally Binding" is the latest in a series of exhibitions that examine law books as physical artifacts, and the relationships between their forms and content.
10am - 6pm daily
and open to Yale affiliates until 10pm
Rare Book Exhibition Gallery
Level L2 of the Yale Law School
Lillian Goldman Law Library
127 Wall Street
New Haven, CT
41.3119645, -72.9278146
Legally Binding: Fine and Historic Bindings from the Yale Law Library
