Robert Riviere

Robert Riviere (30 June 1808, London — 12 April 1882, London) was an English bookbinder of Huguenot descent.

Riviere was descended from a French family, who left their country on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. His father, Daniel Valentine Riviere (1780–1854), who was a drawing-master of considerable celebrity and a gold medallist of the Royal Academy, married, in 1800, Henrietta Thunder, by whom he had a family of five sons and six daughters. The eldest and third sons, William Riviere and Henry Parsons Riviere were both painters. Anne, the eldest daughter, became the second wife of Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, the composer, and acquired much distinction as a singer.

Robert, the second son, was educated at an academy at Hornsey kept by Mr. Grant, and on leaving school, in 1824, was apprenticed to Messrs. Allman, the booksellers, of Princes Street, Hanover Square, London. In 1829 he established himself at Bath as a bookseller, and subsequently as a bookbinder in a small way, employing only one man. But not finding sufficient scope for his talents in that city, he came in 1840 to London, where he commenced business as a bookbinder at 28 Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, afterwards removing to 196 Piccadilly.

The excellent workmanship and good taste displayed in his bindings gradually won for them the appreciation of connoisseurs, and he was largely employed by the Duke of Devonshire, Samuel Christie-Miller, Captain Francis Capper 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 was awarded 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 Europe’ and other distinguished persons. It is said that two thousand skins of the best red Morocco, as well as fifteen hundred yards of silk for the linings of the covers, were used by Riviere for this undertaking. He also restored and bound the famous Domesday Book, now preserved in the Record Office.

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