an armorial binding mystery

Another book from my students’ projects, this one with a curious binding: At first glance, what you might see is an armorial binding: a binding in which an owner has stamped his arms in gold tooling. No big deal, really; there are plenty of books like those in libraries. But this one is more complicated: there are TWO coats of arms, one stamped on top of the other. Here’s a close-up of the center of the binding, where the arms are: And here’s the picture again with one of the two arms outlined: A close-up of the top portion, in which you can see that there are two crowns juxtaposed and the heads of two faintly visible supporters: Looked at in raking light, you can see that the supporter on the right looks like an antlered stag: And the supporter on the left looks like a horse: I can’t make…