Taking a rather different tack from my previous posts, which have focused especially on texts and encounters, in this post I’ll look at a new project that I’m currently working on, on how Maghrebi material culture – products, commodities, animals – appeared in Britain.

In the sixteenth century, Morocco was particularly known in Britain for its sugar plantations and access to gold transported across the Sahara, particularly after Mawlay Ahmad al-Mansur (r. 1578-1603) conquered the Songhai Empire to control the caravan routes from West Africa. Widespread prestige followed the famous Barbary lions, which regularly came as diplomatic gifts and lived in the Tower of London menagerie, and Donna Landry has shown how important the well-bred, hardy and fast Barbary horses, along with Arabic and Turkish counterparts, became a central part of British horse-riding culture through the eighteenth century.

There is one commodity, however, that has raised little scholarly attention, but was widespread throughout British high society throughout the seventeenth century and beyond, and consistently carried with it a Maghrebi name and all kinds of related associations. I’m talking about ‘morocco leather’. This was a kind of extremely fine, soft, hard-wearing, and richly dyed sumac-tanned goatskin, originating in the Sokoto region of northern Nigeria, transported across the Sahara and exported to Europe by Maghrebi, particularly Moroccan, merchants.

Morocco leather, at first known by various other names including ‘Barbary hides’, ‘Barbary skins’, and ‘red’ or ‘yellow Morocco’, was being sold in Britain as early as 1596, when a Mr Merrick imported 600 ‘Barbary hides’, selling 250 of them to the Mayor of Plymouth for £100,^[1] but the luxury product really took off after the British took over Tangier from 1662. The anonymous author of A Description of Tangier enthusiastically reported in 1664, ‘Hereupon we had free Trade with the Moors, they daily bringing their Camels, laden with Hides and Skins, which is their chief Commodity; and in return they get Money, and other Provision: This Place being the great Market for those things that come from Algier to Tituan, and from thence hither’.^[2] 

A Description of Tangier, The Country and People adjoyning (London: for Samuel Speed, 1664).

Image from Early English Books Online, copyright ProQuest.

As the market grew, lower-quality sheep skin, tanned in Morocco, was also sold as morocco leather, and similar products were imported from the Levant, with shiploads arriving in London advertised in newspapers.^[3] In Britain, the leather was turned into fashionable accessories and shoes, upholstered onto chairs and other furniture – a 1712 gentleman’s estate sale included ‘Nine fine Red Morocco leather Chairs, and a Dressing Chair’ – but above all, it was used for binding books.

Pair of red morocco leather child’s shoes with silver buckle, unknown English maker, c. 1750-1800. T.23 to C-1956, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1122735/pair-of-shoes-unknown/.

Esteemed particularly for its softness and distinctive grain, British bookbinders made concerted efforts to emulate the material by various techniques. By the early-mid eighteenth century, a slew of increasingly effective imitations were achieved, and local ‘morocco leather manufacturers’ added blue and green morocco to the traditional red, yellow, black and brown. By the turn of the nineteenth century, nearly all obvious distinctions between imported and locally produced morocco leather had been erased, and to many modern curators, ‘morocco’ refers either to the distinctive grain, or simply to goat leather bindings, whatever their origin. Morocco leather-bound books are everywhere you can find historic British books, but these collections are very often presented without a robust historical grounding in British-Maghrebi trade and diplomacy, which obscures their long and complex history.

My current project, funded with the generous support of the ANZAMEMS Early Career Fellowship Scheme and a small grant from the Arts Early Career Academic Committee at the University of Melbourne, investigates an exceptionally fine collection of morocco leather bookbindings held as part of the Emmerson Collection at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne. Looking at more than 250 different printed books catalogued as bound in morocco leather before 1800, I hope to trace which Britons owned morocco leather, how far it penetrated British society through class and space, how closely and in what ways various Britons associated morocco leather with the Maghreb, and how we might distinguish early/late and imported/locally produced morocco leather.

Firstly and most obviously, the Emmerson morocco bindings attest to the fashionability and prestige attached to morocco in late Stuart society, broadly correlating with the stabilisation of British-Maghrebi relations. Repeatedly employed in lavish style by royal bookbinder Samuel Mearne and his contemporaries, the collection includes morocco-bound books from the shelves of the Duchess of York, Duke of Beaufort, Duchess of Marlborough, Duchess of Buckingham, Earl of Essex, Earl of Macclesfield, Countess of Gainsborough, and first baronet Chetwode, as well as the polyglot Whig Bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet, and the high-church controversialist Henry Sacheverell, presented to him by a loyal supporter during his imprisonment in 1709. There are also clear strong links with British-Maghrebi relations: in addition to items owned by every Stuart monarch from James VI and I to Anne, who negotiated with Maghrebi leaders, fought wars against Maghrebi ships, and entertained Maghrebi envoys in their palaces, there is a book owned by diarist John Evelyn, who extensively recorded the Moroccan embassy to London in 1681-82; another owned by Sir William Trumbull, who visited and corresponded with Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli as British ambassador to Constantinople; and a third owned by famous political commentator and newspaper editor Roger L’Estrange, who repeatedly engaged with British-Maghrebi relations in print. This one pictured, presented by playwright Elkanah Settle, who penned the popular, controversial plays Heir of Morocco and Empress of Morocco, to Baron William Paget, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, is especially interesting because it seems that Paget rejected the gift and returned the book. Settle, ever the pragmatic, covered over Paget’s coat of arms with a new matching morocco binding tooled with the arms of Banaster Maynard, third Baron Maynard, which was later partially removed so the  copy now shows both.

The front and back (original) covers of Elkanah Settle, Eusebia triumphans. : the Hannover succession to the imperial crown of England, an heroick poem. (London : Printed for John Nutt, near Stationers-Hall, 1702). Author’s photograph.

RAREEMM 725/8, Rare Books Collection, State Library of Victoria.

Examining these bindings in person reveals a great deal about the diverse ways in which morocco is used. Soft, pliable, strong, and lending itself to dyeing in vibrant colours, goatskin is ideal for bookbinding, and has for centuries numbered among the most prized. We can see morocco particularly used as the rich backdrop for shining gilded tooling, like this example here, which characterises (with variations in ornateness) many of the works that appear in the Emmerson collection. We can also see morocco used to bind books in a wide range of sizes, which naturally affects cost but equally influences the intimate, bodily experience of reading and the impact of the books when displayed: where you might hold this tiny Venetian printing of Petrarch’s works owned by Sir Richard Browne in the palm of your hand, one can hardly imagine doing the same with Charles II’s royally-bound copy of Jeremy Taylor’s Symbolon theologikon, clearly designed for a different kind of reading. We also have this fabulous example, a copy of a 1650 eulogistic work for the executed Charles I, with both an ornately tooled cover in brown morocco, but also elegant gilded gauffering.

The author’s hand alongside Sir Thomas Browne’s edition of Il Petrarca / di nuouo ristampato et di bellissime figure intagliate in rame adornato (In Venetia: Presso Giralamo Porro, 1600), bound in red morocco c.1649-83.

RAREEMM 163/11, Emmerson Collection, State Library of Victoria.

Jeremy Taylor, Symbolon theologikon, or, A collection of polemicall discourses : wherein the Church of England in its worst as well as more flourishing condition, is defended in many material points, against the attempts of the papists on one hand, and the fanaticks on the other. Together with some additional pieces addressed to the promotion of practical religion and daily devotion / by Jer. Taylor. (London : Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston, bookseller to the King's most excellent Majesty, at the Angel in Amen-Corner, 1674), bound in red morocco c.1674-85. Author’s photograph.

RAREEMM 242/9, Emmerson College, State Library of Victoria.

Reliquiæ sacræ Carolinæ. Or the vvorks of that great monarch and glorious martyr King Charls the I. Collected together, and digested in order, according to their several subjects, civil and sacred. The contents appear in the next ensuing pages.(Hague : Printed by Samuel Browne, 1650). Author’s photograph.

RAREEMM 115/26, Emmerson Collection, State Library of Victoria.

We can also observe a consistency in colours: numerous examples of red, black, and brown morocco can be clearly dated to the seventeenth century, while examples of blue and green morocco do not appear until later. Out of a sample of 165 seventeenth- and eighteenth-century volumes in the Emmerson collection, 94 are red, 46 black, 17 brown, and only eight are green or blue, all of which date from the eighteenth century. This is consistent with textual data, and likely confirms that blue and green morocco are connected with European or British-made morocco, rather than those originating in the Maghreb.

Finally, marginalia hint at the intimate uses to which books bound in morocco leather were put. This heartbreaking story, written at the back of a book of 1683 almanacs bound in contemporary brown morocco, records the marriage, childbirth, and death of the owner’s youngest daughter, complete with dates and even hours of the day. This story, traced through the dated marriage, point to Ellen’s identity as the 23-year-old daughter of Sir John Wittewrong, baronet in Harding, Hertfordshire, who married 27-year-old lawyer Samuel Gibbs, of the Inner Temple, on the date given. Morocco, as this example suggests, was not only a luxurious material, designed for decorative use and conspicuous display, but it could be held in the hand of a loving father as they inscribed in substantial detail their grief at the loss of a child and joy at the gain of a grandchild.

Marginalia on the back inside cover of William Lilly, Merlini Anglici ephemeris: or, Astrological judgments for the year 1683. By William Lilly, student in astrology. (London : Printed by J. Macock for the Company of Stationers, 1683), bound in brown morocco c.1683. Author’s photograph.

RAREEMM 325/10, Emmerson Collection, State Library of Victoria.

At this stage in the project I have rather more questions than answers. However, there is a clear connection between the owners of morocco leather and those with an interest in the Maghreb, and there are developing markers for how it was used, hints at some broad correlations between British-Maghrebi relations and the prevalence of morocco bindings in British society, and some suggestions of how we might tell the difference between imported, imitated and locally-produced material. The material was clearly favoured, obscured as the backdrop to ornate ostentation yet immanent to both conspicuous display and intimate occasion. As the project progresses, I will share more!

^[1] Calendar of State Papers…Elizabeth CCLX: 284.

^[2] Anonymous, A Description of Tangier, The Country and People Adjoyning with An Account of the Person and Government of Gayland The present Usurper of the Kingdom of Fez; And a short Narrative of the Proceedings of the English in those Parts (London: Samuel Speed, 1664), 40.

^[3] Heidemarie Doganalp-Votzi, ‘Histories and Economies of a Small Anatolian Town: Safranbolu and its Leather Handicrafts’, in Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East: Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean, edited by Surabaya Faroqhi and Randi Deguilhem (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 322; Nicholas Pickwoad, ‘“The Ubiquity and Variety of Books: a personal view of old books and bindings” – an essay to accompany the lecture entitled “Finding words – the Ligatus Glossary Project”’, Professorial Platforms series, London College of Fashion, 3 February 2011, 26-28, http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/7865/1/pickwoadfinal.pdf; Post Boy, 15-17 June 1697; Daily Courant, 17 July 1710, 12 February 1713; Daily Courant, 28 April 1712, 13 March 1713; LG, 12-16 August 1712; Post Man, 16-19 August 1707.

Title image: English Tangier, great entrepôt for morocco leather’s export into British Restoration culture. Hendrick Danckerts, A View of Tangier, 1669, oil on canvas, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/23/collection/402578/a-view-of-tangier.