Travel in China

1804

de Beer Ec 1804 B

London: Printed by A. Strahan for T. Cadell and W. Davies

Noticeable on the cover of John Barrow’s Travel in China (1804) is a tree calf pattern, which was a dominant decorative style in English binding about the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The ‘tree calf’ effect is produced by a mix of chemicals (copperas and potassium carbonate) which are allowed to run across the covers so that staining occurs. This process forms the tree trunk and branches pattern. Important as a work that contains the first aquatints depicting Chinese life, this publication, with its rebacked cover, also has marbled edges, a feature that came into vogue about the end of the 17th century.