The volume above, seen housed in its silk and velvet-lined case, represents the peak of twentieth-century book arts. Sangorski & Sutcliffe was founded in an attic in Bloomsbury in 1901 by two apprentice binders, and in only a few years it had become one of the most important binderies in the world. Francis Sangorski and his partner George Sutcliffe produced exquisite luxury bindings incorporating delicate inlays and onlays, detailed silver and gilt work, and valuable gemstones. The firm is perhaps best remembered for the book known as “The Great Omar“, a copy of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám incorporating 150 individual jewels in its covers, which sank with the Titanic in 1912 only weeks before Sangorski himself died in a drowning accident.
This copy of A Dream of Fair Women (BOOK SOLD) by Alfred Tennyson was hand-written and illuminated on vellum and finely bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe sometime between 1905 and 1911. The covers are blue-green morocco with brown and red onlays and exquisite gilt blocking, and feature five garnet and six turquoise cabochons inset into the upper cover. A very handsome example of the illuminations and jeweled bindings for which the firm was famous. As usual, click to enlarge the images.
Turquoise and garnet on the Sangorski & Sutcliffe binding.
One of the most visually delightful items to land on my desk recently, is a set of Arts & Crafts magazine is a wonderful record of the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements and their appeal to amateur artists and craftspeople.
The Arts & Crafts Movement grew from the ideals of William Morris and John Ruskin, who believed that modern industry was detrimental to English life and aesthetics, dehumanizing the production of goods and influencing the Victorian taste for inexpensive yet gaudy decor. Beginning in the 1860s Morris, Ruskin, and their followers advocated the return to skilled craftsmanship and an over-arching aesthetic influenced by traditional styles such as the Gothic. Morris’s interior design firm became famous for its wallpapers, textiles and stained glass, and his Kelmscott Press revived the art of the hand-press by creating masterpieces of book design such as The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Appearing in the 1890s, and in many ways inspired by Morris, Art Nouveau did not have a social reform aspect like that of the Arts & Crafts Movement, but it did advocate a total aesthetic incorporating art, architecture, and interior design. Its proponents were inspired by graceful and curving natural forms, such as the flowing shapes of plants and the iridescent bodies of insects. The two styles were contemporary for a short period, and the Art Nouveau aesthetic meshed well with the Arts & Crafts emphasis on romanticism and hand-production.
Wrapper to the first number, bound in to volume I.
Both movements were also popular with the middle and upper classes, who took to them as hobbyists and semi-professionals (with book binding becoming a particular favourite of artistically-minded women), not unlike the contemporary resurgence of crafting as exemplified by Etsy. It was to capitalize on this trend that Arts & Crafts magazine was founded in 1904. It described itself as “A Monthly Practical Magazine for the Studio, the Workshop, and the Home”, but based on the contents its primary audience was not composed of professionals but middle and upper class people with free time, disposable incomes, and an interest in art but no formal training. It featured practical articles on supplies and tools, instructions for reproducing professional techniques, stylistic advice and patterns, photographs of professional work and museum pieces, announcements of amateur competitions, and general art and exhibition news.
Our set includes all the issues up to April 1906 (the British Library holds issues dated up to August of that year), bound together in four volumes and retaining the original wrappers from some of the issues. It is replete with large photo spreads and detailed instructional diagrams , as well as wonderful patterns designed for readers to use in their own craft projects. Even better from our perspective, one of the magazine’s regular features was a section on bookbinding by master binders Sangorski & Sutcliffe, written during the most creative period in the firm’s history. Below, a selection of images give a flavour of the magazine’s contents. As usual, click any photo to enlarge.
To learn more about these movements see the following links:
Today’s post is a collaborative effort with my colleague Adam Douglas.
The philosophy of book dealing has changed radically since the days when dealers stripped every trace of prior ownership from books before reselling them, going so far as to wash medieval marginalia from the pages of manuscripts. Today, both dealers and collectors have a firmer grounding in the history of books and understand that vestiges of ownership not only give a book character, but can be valuable historical and cultural artefacts. Our practice at Peter Harrington is to preserve as much as possible about a book, including bookplates, ownership inscriptions and even the ephemeral items that we find nestled in the pages. But what do you do when those traces of the past are fraudulent?
Last year a book runner dropped by the shop with a two-volume set of Shakespeare Illustrated, published in London in 1793 and bound in attractive Regency-era blue morocco.
The most interesting aspects of the set were its fore-edge paintings, miniature artworks painted onto the leading edge of the leaves that can only be seen when the pages are fanned. The runner claimed that these particular paintings were executed and signed by John Edwards of the Edwards of Halifax family, innovative booksellers and binders in London during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. John Edwards created some of the firm’s famous painted vellum bindings, and his fore-edge paintings are now highly sought-after. “Paintings signed by him are rare,” the runner reminded us.
The fore-edge of one volume as it normally appears. All that can be seen is the gold leaf covering the painting.
The fore-edge paintings on volumes I and II, visible when the leaves are fanned.
We bought the books but, as sometimes happens in large bookshops, they were set aside on the reserve shelves for over a year. When we looked at them again we were intrigued, but not in the way that we’d expected.
Our first indication that something was amiss was that the artist, who signed the paintings as “J. E.”, had also dated them to 1799. One of the reasons for the scarcity of fore-edge paintings signed by John Edwards is that he mysteriously disappeared during a business trip to Paris in 1793. His family came to the conclusion that he had run afoul of the revolutionary mob and been guillotined, but whatever the case, he was certainly not executing bindings in 1799.
Next we come to the book itself. Although done in Regency style, it doesn’t have any of the characteristics of a true Edwards of Halifax binding. It is not Etruscan calf or painted vellum, and the border decoration is not the Edwardses’ splendidly named “metope-and-pentaglyph” roll. The image below and to the left is a detail of the border decoration on our volumes, composed of alternating Greek key and leaf designs. To the right is a lovely metope-and-pentaglyph roll on a true Edwards of Halifax binding (many thanks to Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books for providing the photo). The metopes are the concentric circles and the pentaglyphs are the lozenges grouped in five.
On the front pastedown we found, reassuringly, the bookplate of the Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929), a prime minister and noted book collector unlikely to be fooled by a false fore-edge painting. Unfortunately, the plate only appears in the first volume, whereas Rosebery would normally have placed one in each volume. This example is also worn and scratched, as if it was removed from another book and pasted here to add authenticity.
By far the most spurious evidence is found at the front of each volume. Each is signed and dated 31 March 1849 by R. W. Hay. Tipped in opposite is a hand-written note, presumably by the person who sold Hay the books. “The fore-edges of the pages of these 2 volumes were painted by John Edwards, bookbinder of Halifax, brother of James Edwards, bookseller of London and were purchased by my brother James Frith at the dispersal of the Richard Heber Library in 1835 for £45. Alex Frith, The Close, Halstead, Essex, June 4th 1848.”
That seems clear enough at first glance. Richard Heber is probably the most famous book collector in English history: the term “bibliomaniac” was coined for him. He owned some 15,000 printed books, and his sales catalogues run to sixteen volumes. But £45 sounds like a lot of money in 1835, and we know from other reference sources that his copy of the second folio of Shakespeare made £10.5s. So according to the note, Alex Frith’s brother allegedly paid five times as much for these pleasant but ephemeral volumes as the second edition of Shakespeare’s plays made at the same sale. What Frith seems to have provided for the hapless Mr. Hay is the Victorian equivalent of an eBay certificate of authenticity.
So everything about the book speaks of a long history of fraudulent claims. Is it entirely worthless? We don’t think so. Described honestly, as an attractive book in an anonymous contemporary binding, we feel we can price it competitively. That leaves the question – should we remove the Rosebery bookplate and Alex Frith’s mendacious little note? To allow them to remain is to risk that future buyers will be duped, but removing them destroys the record of the deceit, which is interesting and even historically significant in its own way. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
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