Morocco Leather in Early Modern Britain: Towards a Transcultural History of Fine Leather Bookbindings

Abstract

Morocco leather, a variety of goatskin used extensively in fine British bookbindings across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, may be the most widespread extant material result of early British-North African trade. Integrating archival and print sources on trade and diplomacy, eighteenth-century book sales catalogues, and detailed examination of morocco bindings from the Emmerson Collection (State Library of Victoria), this article presents a new economic and cultural history of morocco leather in English society. It disentangles ‘morocco’ and ‘turkey’ as terms for goatskin, measures morocco’s rise, incorporation and gradual decline, and advances guidelines for distinguishing between imported and imitated morocco.