A handsome mid-late eighteenth century booksellers label, John Payne ‘at the Feathers in Paternoster Row’. One of the larger examples (100mm x 70mm) in size, attractively engraved. The BBTI shows Payne as working between 1744-1787, at four different addresses all on Paternoster Row. He was at 15 Paternoster Row between 1752 and 1758, then at ‘Pope’s Head’, followed by the Feathers and finally at 54 Paternoster Row.

Raven, in his ‘The Business of Books’, notes that Payne, who was a friend of Dr. Johnson’s, moved to the Feathers in 1765 and moved to 54 Paternoster Row in ‘about’ 1767 – Confusingly there was another John Payne in Paternoster Row, the business partner of Joseph Johnson who later published Paine, Godwin and Wollstonecraft.