hidden in plain view
Payne (1739–97) also first set up shop in St Martin’s Lane, although too late to be a viable candidate for the Nostell jib door. 50 There is, however, one candidate amongst Chippendale’s local bookbinders who stands out. James Fraser (b. 1740) was a promi- nent master bookbinder, one of the five Prosecuting Masters in 1787 in the famous case which resulted in five journeymen being imprisoned for combination. He actively sought to settle the dis- putes, publishing a series of broadsides and pamphlets addressed to the master and journeymen bookbinders of London. 51 His business is recorded at a number of addresses, the earliest being 4, White Hart Court, Castle Street. Just around the corner from Chippendale’s shop, Castle Street was linked to St Martin’s Lane by St Martin’s Court. The BBTI has him active, presumably at this address, by 1765, 52 and by 1794 he had relocated to 9, Frontier Court, St Martin’s Lane, advertising himself as follows: Gentlemen’s libraries repaired and ornamented. Sham backs for library doores fitted up in the completest manner. 53 It is very tempt- ing to link these two craftsmen. This is the only example the author has yet found of a bookbinder of this period advertising themselves as a specialist in the creation of sham doors for libraries. We know that Chippendale commissioned the Nostell spines in London in 1767 and it seems more than coincidental that a binder specialising in just this activity was in business yards from Chippendale’s shop. If there was method behind the choice of spine titles at Nostell, it is now too subtle to read. Unlike Mount Stewart, there is no attempt within the Nostell selection to be up-to-date. There are nearly as many seventeenth-century authors as eighteenth, and the selection 50 . Payne arrived in London in the mid-1760s, working first for Thomas Osborne, the bookseller of Gray’s Inn. The date he established his first independent bindery in St Martin’s Lane is uncertain, but it must have been within months of the Nostell com- mission. The BBTI states that he worked for a Thomas Payne (no relation), who set him up in business c. 1767. http://bbti.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/details/?traderid=53094 51 . ESTC T216485: An Address to the Master Bookbinders ([London: 1787]); ESTC T220627: To the Bookbinders in General, both Masters and Journeymen ([London: 1787]); ESTC 216484: Address to the Master and Journeymen Bookbinders of London and Westminster ([London: 1787]). 52 . http://bbti.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/details/?traderid=25497 53 . See E. Howe, A List of London Bookbinders 1648–1815 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1950), p. 38.
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