Used very good. Looks to have been re-bound.
CARVINGS IN ALABASTER.
During the latter part of the Middle Ages an active
industry was engaged in producing reliefs and small
images (besides elaborate tombs with effigies and
other larger sculpture), from the alabaster quarries at
Chellaston and Tutbury. The alabaster workers
(alablastermen) of Nottingham, in the neighbourhood
of the quarries, were particularly numerous, but
Guilds of these workers also existed in other towns.
These English alabaster carvings, which may be
regarded as an industrial offshoot from the great
English sculpture of the 13th and 14th centuries,
acquired a European reputation,.
There appears to
have been a considerable export trade in them by the
close of the I5th century, and many more of them
found their way out of the country at the Reformation.
The reliefs of the earlier period (late 14th and early
15th century) are relatively rare, and seem to have
been made for separate use. With the exception of
the beautiful image of St. Barbara holding her cannon