THE ORIENTAL LIBRARY. - Of the eastern binding, limited to the Mediterranean basin, mention has been made above insofar as in the 15th-16th centuries it exercised an influence on the Italian one.
Italy knew it through Venice; therefore its introduction into the West coincides with the power of that city; but it was much earlier. The oldest known binding is the Coptic one of the Berlin Library, which is traced back to the 6th century; it covers a manuscript on papyrus but cut in the form of a codex and is decorated with a geometric design, traced with a point. Later Coptic bindings present, in addition to the lines executed with the point, carvings made with a knife that sometimes recall mosaics and Muslim architectural decorations. The use of the knife would last a long time, even when the decoration was executed by means of impression and gold appeared. Then the eastern binding would take its definitive form, which would be preserved unchanged for several centuries. It is mainly characterized by a central mandorla and by a delicate floral embroidery inside and outside the mandorla; the leather is hollowed out or impressed to a great depth with the stamps; the lower surface is gilded or painted. Notable is the flap, an appendage of the second face, which, folding over in front, protects the book; only in Persian bindings do animals appear. Persia also created a type of binding that is called "woodland"; over the entire surface of the faces and and of the flap a scene is illuminated, often of hunting, sometimes of daily life with human figures, then lacquered. This technique, which had its greatest splendor in the 16th-17th centuries, gives the vagueness of a genre painting. - See plates LXVII-LXVIII.
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