BOOKBINDING. PREDIGER (Christoph Ernst). Der in aller heut zu Tag ublichen Arbeit wohl anweisende accurate Buchbinder und Futtermacher: welcher lehret... wie nicht nur ein buch auf das netteste zu verfertigen, sondern auch wie solches seine gebührende dauer halt... uberdies zeiget, wie alle farben auf leder und pergament anzusetzen... Alles aufrichtig versehen / durch Christoph Ernst Prediger, buchbinder in Anspach. Kommentar von Adolf Rhein, Albert Haemmerle, Heinz Peterssen uber das Leben un Wirken des Christoph Ernst Prediger.1741

Frankfurt & Leipzig, First edition, FIRST 2 VOLUMES OF 4 ONLY, thick 8vo (167 x 100 mm), Vol. I: [32, including frontispiece], 250, [20, register]pp., + 18 engraved plates (numbered 1-18); Vol. II: [32, including frontispiece], 266, [6, register]pp., + 18 engraved plates (numbered 1-18), both volumes bound together in contemporary calf, spine gilt tooled with contrasting lettering pieces, joints worn and cracked, head and foot of spine chipped, covers rubbed. A key work in the history of early bookbinding manuals. Pollard & Potter list this as their no. 22, with the following note: "Vol. I is an exhaustive manual of bookbinding and box-making, with tables showing the cost of materials, the time taken over the various processes and the cost of different styles of binding. The other three volumes deal with more specialised work such as the binding of school books, and there is inevitably a good deal of repetition." Richard Wolfe in his Marbled Paper gives a good commentary on this book and states almost as an aside that "Prediger's manual is also remarkable as the first exhaustive and technical work on bookbinding and slipcase making to appear anywhere in the world." Volume one is the single most valuable of the four volumes from the point of view of information imparted. Also, since the complete work was published over a 12 year period, complete sets are very rare. Pollard & Potter, Early Bookbinding Manuals, p. viii, no. 22; Wolfe, Marbled Paper, p. 30; Breslauer, Bookbinding literature, p. 10