The bindings of John Ratcliff (fl. 1661-1682) represent the earliest identifiable bindings of Colonial New England. The attribution of specific tools and subsequent styles to the work of Ratcliff derives from two blind-tooled commonplace books of Samuel Sewall (1652-1730). Both have dated inscriptions that record Ratcliff as the binder. Book History literature suggests that Ratcliff, who came to America with the charge of binding copies of the 1663 Eliot Indian Bible, returned to England around 1680, and that his binding tools then passed into the hands of American binder Edmund Ranger.