sep / oct • 2015 FOCUS a unique 1629 book of common prayer

left: CCAHA Conservation Assistant Amber Hares displays the gauffered (or decorated) edge of the text block; right: Hares blends a mend to the front joint with watercolors

household, the family members carried consolidated abrasions in the spine Nicholas Ferrar was born out various religiously-focused activities. leather, cleaned the margins of the leaves, mended page tears, reattached a loose to a wealthy family in One such task was the copying and group of leaves to the text block, and production of books. The Ferrars were bridged vulnerable losses on the back London in 1592. visited by a woman whose family had a cover board. bookbinding business in Cambridge. Under After graduating from the University of her tutelage, many members of the Ferrar’s effect on literary history didn’t Cambridge, he pursued various business household learned bookbinding, and the end with the Little Gidding bindery. The prospects in London. Upon losing a Little Gidding community produced and poet George Herbert sent Ferrar the substantial amount of money to the bound various religious volumes. They are manuscript of The Temple on his Virginia Company, Ferrar moved to Little especially well known for their bound deathbed, charging Ferrar with deciding Gidding, a small town roughly 80 miles albums of Harmonies, which they whether it was fit for publication. Luckily north of London. He bought the Little constructed by cutting gospels and other for prosperity, Ferrar immediately Gidding manor house and grounds and texts from existing books and then published the poems, which are still was soon joined by his mother, sister, rearranging, illustrating, and binding them widely read today. In the twentieth brother, and their families. Together, they into new works. century, after several dormant centuries, restored the church on the property’s Little Gidding again became a site of grounds and dedicated the majority of The University of Louisville has one of the religious activity. T.S. Eliot visited in 1936 their activities to religious devotion. surviving Little Gidding versions of the and wrote the poem “Little Gidding” about Book of Common Prayer. Like many of the the site. Eliot also provided the means for The structure and activities of the volumes produced at Little Gidding, it the founding of the Friends of Little community weren’t defined by any features many ornate details, including Gidding, a group dedicated to honoring specific doctrine other than an adherence gold tooling, gauffered edges, and hand- the life and works of Ferrar. The group to the Book of Common Prayer. They sewn double-core green and white hosts various events, including an annual prayed several times throughout the day headbands. The book’s cover and the pilgrimage, to this day. and established a prayer schedule so that edges of the pages are stamped and a member of the house was in prayer at painted. Conservation Assistant Amber Read this and other stories at CCAHA's all times. Along with running the Hares treated the volume. She website: www.ccaha.org.