• The book is an edited and illustrated version of the original one and includes 18 or more unique illustrations which are relevant to its content.
• For several centuries the art of decorating leather remained the speciality of Spain. The word “cordwainer,” derived from Cordova, is a witness of this monopoly by the Peninsula of everything connected with leather-work, apart from the modelled and stamped leathers, introduced into Venice from the East. Other countries, however, were doing better work than that of imitating the celebrated manufactures of Cordova. In Germany especially, leather was discovered to be an ideal material for rendering the mantles and plumed helmets of heraldry, while the marvels of carved and embossed leather preserved in the Dijon Museum are a proof of the interest taken in leather-work by the great decorative school of the court of Burgundy.