An unrecorded prayerbook printed in Leitomischl (now Litomyšl, Czechia) in an attractive Bauerneinband incorporating printed figures of Saints Barbara and Lucy.
 
Octavo. Bound in a contemporary Bauerneinband of vellum over thin wooden boards, stained blue and pink and gilt to a panel design, each board with central hand-coloured stipple-engraved cartouche depicting a female saint. All edges gilt and gauffered at ends. A very good copy, somewhat duststained and rubbed, very short split at head of front joint.
 
An ostentatious but affordable style popularised in the late eighteenth century, Bauerneinbände or ‘peasant bindings’ such as this were fashionable among the working class, but attracted criticism on the grounds that they were acquired more for public display than for pious devotion: Gregorius, a near-contemporary writer on binding, complains that ‘in these spoiled times, every
peasant girl … wants to have – purely for show – a hymn book with gilt edges’ (Foot, p. 76).
 
Most likely intended as a cheap means of adorning books, the use of printed images in the decoration of bindings is very rare indeed.
 
No copies traced in OCLC or KVK.