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Message:: [QUOTE="2manycats, post: 2110799, member: 13761"]Yes, I believe you are correct. The second line must be " Gilt Back Double Bands", I think, which would be the raised hubs on the spine which have a gold ornament between two parallel lines; I cannot make out the writing in the third line either, but I think it's some binder's code for the type & style of binding, perhaps known only to him - common types of leather binding would be full (or half or quarter) calf or morocco or sheep or vellum - this one looks like a sort of full morocco, but that's obviously not what it says. Possibly 'Full Tusk' as in Tuscan, if that's where he got some of his leather? The terminology in common use then is not well-known anymore, and has changed - for instance, what they're calling the back, we'd now call the spine. Instructions to binders were common at the time, though, when hand-work was cheap - you most often see them in illustrated books where the plates were printed separately and had to be glued in by the binder: a printed page will tell the binder which page to place them opposite. And owner's names on bindings show up fairly often, even into the 1950s, usually on things like yearbooks or club manuals.[/QUOTE]