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 the Rare Book Collection's Spring 2019 exhibition, "Legally Binding: Fine and Historic Bindings from the Yale Law Library."
The curators of the exhibition are Michael Laird, owner of Michael Laird Rare Books in Lockhart, Texas, and Michael Widener, the Law Library's Rare Book Librarian. They selected bindings 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.
"Legally Binding: Fine and Historic Bindings from the Yale Law Library" is on display February 4 to May 30 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery of the Lillian Goldman Law Library, located on Level L2 of the Yale Law School (127 Wall Street, New Haven CT). The exhibition is open to the general public 10am-6pm daily, and open to Yale affiliates until 10pm.
For more information, contact Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian, phone (203) 432-4494 and email <mike.widener@yale.edu>.
