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Of these sleek moroccos, cream-white or dyed with cochineal or pomegranate skins, are made the rich bags of the Chleuh dancing-boys, the embroidered slippers for the harem, the belts and harnesses that figure so largely in Moroccan trade and of the finest, in old days, were made the pomegranate-red morocco bindings of European bibliophiles.
In the Athenæum, on the contrary, many of the moroccos showed the same decay as the calf, russia and sheep. There was, however, a wide difference in the condition of moroccos of the same age some showing as much decay as the calf, while others had scarcely any of the disintegration common to the older calf bindings.
Even the libraries of the daughters of Louis Quinze, three diligent and well-instructed princesses, are only known apart by the colours of the moroccos employed by Derôme.
Just as I had rather have my historians in old calf and my chroniclers in black letter, so do I delight to see my modern poets, the Benjamins of my affections, clothed in coats of many colors. For them no moroccos are too rich, and no "toolings" too elaborate. I love to see them smiling on me from the shelves of my book-cases, as glowing and varied as the sunset through a painted oriel.
There were about 50,000 printed books, almost all well-bound; and it was thought that the choicest Levantine moroccos had been secured for the Minister by an article in a treaty with the Sultan. Colbert died in 1683, and the library remained in his family for half a century afterwards.
A second reason for preferring red in moroccos is that, being dyed with cochineal, it holds its color more permanently than any other the moroccos not colored red turning to a dingy, disagreeable brown after forty or fifty years, while the red are found to be fast colors.
Her heavy gold bracelets had been made to order in Kazan after a pure Tatar model, and her soft-soled boots of rose-pink leather, with conventional designs in many-colored moroccos, sewed together with rainbow-hued silks, reached nearly to her knees.
Roan leather is nothing but sheep-skin, stained or colored; basil or basan is sheepskin tanned in bark, while roan is tanned in sumac, and most of the so called moroccos are also sheep, ingeniously grained by a mechanical process. As all the manufactures in the world are full of "shoddy," or sham materials, the bookbinder's art affords no exception.
Nearly all the early editions were elegant books; carefully printed on rich paper, beautifully bound in rich moroccos and leathers, often emblazoned with gold on the covers, and with corners and clasps of precious metals, they show the wealth and fashion of the owners.
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