Robert Riviere

Artist Info

Robert RiviereLondon, 1808 - 1882, London

Riviere, Robert (1808–1882), bookbinder, was born on 30 June 1808 at 8 Cirencester Place, near Fitzroy Square, London, the fourth born of the twelve children of Daniel Valentine Riviere (1780–1854), painter and drawing-master, and Henrietta Thunder. He was descended from French Huguenots who left their country on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The eldest and third surviving sons, William Riviere and Henry Parsons Riviere, were both painters, and Anna, the eldest daughter [see Bishop, Anna], became the second wife of Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, the composer, and acquired much distinction as a singer. William's son, Briton Riviere, was a celebrated Royal Academician.

Riviere was educated at an academy at Hornsey kept by a Mr Grant, and on leaving school in 1824 was apprenticed to Messrs Allman, the booksellers, of Prince's Street, Hanover Square. In 1829 he established himself at Bath as a bookseller, and subsequently as a bookbinder in a small way, employing only one man. The following year he married Eliza Sarah Pegler; they had two daughters. About 1840 he moved to London, where he commenced business as a bookbinder at 28 Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, afterwards moving first to Great Newport Street, Long Acre (1856–61) and thence to 196 Piccadilly (1862–81). Connoisseurs came to appreciate the excellent workmanship and good taste displayed in his bindings and he was largely employed by the duke of Devonshire, Mr Christie-Miller, Captain Brooke, and other great collectors. He also bound for the queen and the royal family. In the Great Exhibition of 1851 he exhibited several examples of his skill, and he obtained a medal. He was chosen by the council to bind one thousand copies of the large Illustrated Catalogue, intended for presentation to ‘all the crowned heads in the World’ and other distinguished persons. It is said that Riviere used two thousand skins of the best red French Levant, as well as 1500 yards of red silk for the linings of the covers, in this undertaking. He also restored and bound the famousDomesday Book, now rebound, as well as producing some elaborate bindings for Sir Henry James's ‘zincographic’ copy of it (1862).

While the majority of the binding of Riviere, like that of most binders of this period, is deficient in originality, it is in all other respects—in the quality of the materials, the forwarding, and in the delicacy of the tooling—deserving of much commendation. Required by contemporary taste and fashion to produce ‘retrospective’ bindings, frequently in a style not even remotely suitable for the books they contained, Riviere bound a remarkable set of 117 early books for Lord Howard de Walden in very skilled copies of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century designs. This set is now at the Brotherton Library at Leeds. Considering that he was apparently entirely self-taught, his bindings are wonderful specimens of skill and perseverance. Riviere died at his home, 47 Gloucester Road, Regent's Park, on 12 April 1882, and was buried in the churchyard at East End, Finchley.

Riviere bequeathed his business to Percival Calkin, the eldest son of his second daughter, who was taken from school in 1870 to be trained in the firm and who had been taken into partnership by his grandfather in 1881, when the style of the firm was altered to Robert Riviere & Son. Percival's younger brother, Arthur, joined the firm in 1881 and was taken into partnership in 1889. In 1882 the firm moved to 20 Broad Street, Bloomsbury, and from there in 1884 to Heddon Street, off Regent Street. Although the firm continued to produce highly skilled pastiche bindings, some more original work, apparently much influenced by Alfred de Sauty and Sangorski and Sutcliffe, is illustrated in two catalogues issued by Riviere & Son in 1919 and 1920. Arthur's son Stuart Riviere Calkin entered the business in 1908 and was with the firm when it closed in 1939. The goodwill and the tools were sold to Messrs Bayntun of Bath.

W. Y. FLETCHER, rev. MIRJAM M. FOOT

Sources

‘Robert Rivière’, The Bookbinder, 1 (1888), 150–1 • ‘Robt. Rivière & Son (Messrs P. and A. E. Calkin)’, British Bookmaker, 4/44 (1891), 5–7 • C. Ramsden,Bookbinders of the United Kingdom (outside London), 1780–1840 (1954), 140 • C. Ramsden, London bookbinders, 1780–1840 (1956), 123 • H. M. Nixon, ‘Some Huguenot bookbinders’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, 23 (1977–82), 327–9 • H. M. Nixon and M. M. Foot, The history of decorated bookbinding in England (1992), 105 • H. M. Nixon, Five centuries of English bookbinding (1978), 218–9 • M. Packer,Bookbinders of Victorian London (1991), 127 • Great Exhibition of the works of industry of all nations, 1851, 2 (1852), 543 [exhibition catalogue] • Great Exhibition of the works of industry of all nations 1851, reports by the juries (1852), 2. 932, 989 • d. cert. • private information (1896) • The Bibliographer, 2 (1882), 22