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INTRODUCTION TO THIS WEBSITE
This site was inspired by the 2004 article on James Burn & Co.’s denominated binder’s tickets.1, 2 The Burn tickets listed here, from the mid- to late 19th century, are identified using a numbering scheme developed by Douglas Ball (for all the edition binders tickets listed in his book), based on the their physical characteristics, such as size, shape, paper and ink color, rudimentary design attributes, legend, approximate years in use.3 Ball provides neither illustrations of Burn tickets nor lists of books containing these tickets. The intention, therefore, of this site is to take Ball to the next level: to provide an illustration for each Burn ticket described and to list bindings in which the tickets may be found. Some Burn tickets described by Ball remain undiscovered [by me], and this is so indicated in the Ticket Gallery. The Gallery also illustrates examples of Burn tickets not described by Ball (indicated by “Not in Ball”) as well as the books where they were found. These “Not in Ball” tickets are of two types. The first are tickets from the period prior to those described by Ball. These tickets are rectangular in shape and seem to have had some overlap with the later-used lozenge-shape tickets. The second "Not in Ball" type are variants of Ball's descriptions that he did not list or discover. The variants are so far limited to paper color or ink color. Nineteenth century English trade bindery shop ticketing practice is inconsistent, as will be observed by examining physical evidence within the bindings. Of all
the copies of a single title that Burn bound, not all will include a
ticket. (This is a huge presumption based on the small number of
Burn bindings I have examined, but this may be deduced from the
thousands that I have seen, especially those bound for Macmillan,
Burn's biggest and most loyal customer.) Indeed, it is highly
likely that, during the period when
Burn (or for that matter any large English trade/edition binder)
ticketed bindings, those
books not ticketed greatly outnumbered those that were. (This is
another huge presumption based on physical evidence.)
Of all the copies of a single title that Burn bound that contains a ticket, not all the tickets will be necessarily of the same variety. Of all multi-volume sets that Burn bound, normally only the first volume contains a ticket. But it is also the case that all volumes may have a ticket [rare], or more than one but not all volumes will have a ticket [rarer], or only the last volume contains a ticket [very rare], or a volume other than the first or last contains a ticket (rarest). It is also the case that when more than one volume is ticketed in a multi-volume set, the tickets may or may not be the same variety. Finally, in one bespoke binding example, the book contains two marks that Burn bound it: a ticket (in this case printed in gold but not placed in the usual location) and a pallet ink stamp (a sure indicator of a bespoke or small limited edition binding but also in the usual location). One interesting side note is evidence in a binding that a ticket had once been there but is there no longer, for whatever reason. The evidence is glue residence in the outside of the ticket, in this case Burn's smaller lozenge shape. Lastly, this website is a fundamentally static one, to which more information will be added as time goes on. But, it will not become searchable or dynamic, at least in the near term. 1 Gregory V. Jones and Jane E. Brown, “Bound for Edinburgh: Burn’s Denominated Tickets of 1860,” The Book Collector 53 (2004): 525-532. 2 James Burn & Co. was an edition or trade bindery and the successor to a bookbinding business established in London by Thomas Burn in 1781. The business survived into the 20th century. For more information link to Burn & Co. Background. 3 Ball’s scheme appears as appendix E—“Nineteenth-Century Edition Binders’ Signatures”—in his book Victorian Publishers’ Bindings (Williamsburg, Virginia: The Book Press Ltd., 1985), pp. 168-192. Burn tickets are described on pp. 173-174. |