The Strange Suicide Of An Early 20th C. Female Rare Book Binder

by Stephen J. Gertz

On Sunday morning, December 29, 1913, at 11:30AM the body of Mary Effingham Chatfield, 42, an art bookbinder with work commissioned by many of New York's most eminent book collectors and private libraries, was discovered flung across a couch in her studio on the sixth floor of 400 W. 23d Street in Manhattan, NYC.

She had been stabbed with a long, slender paper cutter with keen edge and point. On a nearby table a blood-splattered note was found with the cryptic accusation, "Mrs. Howard is to blame for this."

Close friends of Chatfield, who knew her as "Mollie," upon learning of her sudden, violent death and the strange note, presumed that she had been murdered.  The bloody note indicated that Mollie had written it after being stabbed, then dragged herself to the couch where she soon died: the blade had pierced her heart.

Her older brother, Harvey, who identified the body, knew otherwise. "I have not the slightest doubt that my sister committed suicide," he declared to reporters. "I do not know who the Mrs. Howard she referred to may have been for I do not remember any one of that name who has come into touch with our lives for at least five years." He then told of the bizarre circumstances which led to her death.

Binding by Mary E. Chatfield.

For the prior two months Mollie had been the victim of strange hallucinations, pursued by an inner voice that she believed to be that of a woman, one who commanded Chatfield to submit to her will and do what was demanded by her. In her desperation to escape the voice Mollie rented a studio on the top floor of her building in the hope that the voice could not reach her there. Chatfield, additionally, had taken to long, exhausting walks at rapid pace to elude the harridan's voice that constantly chased her. "It may have been that she believed that a Mrs. Howard was the woman who was following her wherever she went," her brother told a New York Times reporter.

What prompted her snap? Mollie and Harvey had a sister, Elizabeth, who, a year prior, had become so stricken by tuberculosis that she was sent upstate to Saranac, then a world-renowned center for the treatment of TB. They were very close and Mollie had given up her work to accompany and help care for her sister, who was suffering and wasting away. The months which followed were difficult for Mollie and when Elizabeth died she experienced a nervous breakdown.

By October of 1913, however, Mollie had made sufficient progress in her recovery to return to the city and begin work once again. She placed herself under the care of Dr.. John E. Wilson, a "nerve specialist" with an office at 616 Madison Avenue. Then the strange hallucinations began with the voice ordering her to do things she did not want to do. Her escape to the top floor and the frenetic walks around the city followed.

Harvey Chatfield thought that Mollie had been making progress; he had taken her out to dinner on Christmas Eve and she appeared to be in good spirits. Her doctor was also encouraged. She was last seen alive at 7:30 Saturday night December 28th.

Her body was discovered on the couch the next morning by a Mrs. Taylor, who had come to the studio with books she wished to have bound. After no response at the door the superintendent was called and Mrs. Taylor was let in and discovered the tragic scene.

Mr. Chatfield said that Mollie's bindings were commissioned by respected book collectors such as Robert J. Colter. Mrs. Taylor, present at the time Harvey Chatfield was interviewed and, evidently, the soul of discretion, said she thought it best not to mention other prominent people who hired Mary E. Chatfield, who was known in New York's art community for many years.

"Miss Chatfield's studio was one of the most artistically furnished of those in the big building. She had her workshop in the large front room into which the sunlight poured through a great skylight. An old spinning wheel stood in one corner, and the furniture included an antique desk of considerable value and an old mahogany piano. On the mantel was a pair of brass candle-sticks of unique design. A complete bookbinding outfit was neatly arranged on the work table beneath the skylight. Off this room was a smaller one, where Miss Chatfield had lived. She did her own cooking on a small gas range. Miss Chatfield was a member of an old Southern family, friends said. She was a handsome woman," (NY Times obituary).

Upper doublure. Note Chatfield's stamped signature at bottom edge.

The binding seen here is the only one by Mary E. Chatfield that I've thus far encountered. Curiously, no reference to her is found in Marianne Tidcombe's Women Bookbinders 1880-1920. It seems that she did not produce a large body of work; I have not found a single binding by her in any major library's online catalog. Yet with bindings by her in the collections of prominent collectors and libraries, as reported at her death, the books had to wind up somewhere. From a family of means, it may be that she was a dilettante in the Arts & Crafts movement, which, from its roots as an aesthetic protest against mechanization during the late 1880s-early 1890s, had, to a large degree, fallen into vocational work for the wealthy. Yet Chatfield was, reportedly, devoted to bookbinding, an unmarried woman of taste, means, and artistic yearning unsatisfied with the traditional, stultifying role: all dressed up with no place to go except shopping, the opera, and social occasions.

While the binding here - for a selection of Rudyard Kipling's verses bound together from various source editions - is certainly attractive Chatfield was not breaking new ground. But she was quite skilled with onlay work, not easy to well execute. Who did she study with? On the covers she has pictorially recreated the first stanza to Kipling's poem, The Legend of Evil:

This is the sorrowful story
Told when the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
Holding their neighbor's tails.

The upper doublure depicts an onlaid scene of Mandalay at twilight:

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees..

The mystery that is Mary E. Chatfield demands solution. I encourage anyone with further information on her to contact me.

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February 3, 2014. We received the following from Thomas Conroy, with our thanks:

Both the Mary Chatfield binding and the article are important excellent finds. I can add a little knowledge to what you have already.

Mary Chatfield joined the Guild of Book Workers in 1906-1907, its first year, as a "Professional Member" and a pupil of "Minnie Sophie Pratt" (1868-1901). The Prat sisters, originally from Nova Scotia, were almost the only students of Evelyn Nordhoff, Cobden-Sanderson's first American lady student.  Neither Nordhoff nor Minnie Prat lived long enough to gain any particular skill as binders, but they were pioneers. Miss Chatfield didn't appear in the Membership List for 1907-1908, but reappeared in 1908-1909 with "A. Dehertagh" added to her list of teachers. Adolphe Dehertogh, of course, had replaced Frank Mansell as second finisher at the Club Bindery around 1898, and later worked for Edith Diehl; he had been trained in Brussells and had worked in Paris. Miss Chatfield does not appear in the GBW Membership Lists after 1909. It is perhaps impolite, with Dehertogh in the picture, to mention that binding designers have been known to sign books that were
actually executed by real binders, especially in a French-style context. The name "Bonet" comes to mind....

The story is a bit more obscure, though. The Grangerized Kipling shown here has been published before, in an article of 1915-- one of two fine bindings attributed to "Harvy Chatfield." Mary's brother Harvey S. Chatfield also joined the GBW in 1906-1907, sharing a New York address with her (this was most likely a studio address), as a professional but without mentioning his teacher. He likewise missed 1907-1908, and reappeared in 1908-1909, sharing a new NYC address with Mary, and now claiming Dehertogh as his teacher. In 1909-1910 he added "Teacher" to his listing. He remained a member of the Guild until 1920-21, changing his listing only in address. Possibly brother and sister worked as a team, forwarder and finisher; or possibly this was a binding of Mary''s, completed by Harvey after her death.

Finally there is Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor (Mrs. H.C.) of Chicago (b. 1870) who joined the GBW in 1906-1907 as a professional ("Rose Bindery") and as "Pupil of Rene Kieffer, Paris, France." The next year she listed herself as a teacher. She remained in the Guild without change to her listing through 1909-1910. It is at least an interesting coincidence that Mary Chatfield's body was discovered by a "Mrs. Taylor." Perhaps genealogical research might uncover a connection.

REFERENCES:

The Guild of Book Workers First Year Book and List of Members, 1906-1907. New York:The Guild of Book Workers, 1907. Annual, 1907-1946.

Burleigh, G. "Some American Bindings and The Guild of Book Workers." Arts and Decoration 5 (May, 1915), p. 274-276.

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Header image from New York Times obituary December 30, 1913.

Binding images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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You Won't Believe This Incredible Art Edition Of James Joyce's Ulysses

by Stephen J. Gertz

James Joyce completed his novel, Ulysses, on October 30, 1921. Ninety years later, on October 30, 2011, Charlene Matthews, the Los Angeles-based book artist and bookbinder recently the subject of a profile in Studios magazine, began work on an extraordinary edition of the book, based upon Sylvia Beach's true first edition with all its typos included.

Two years later, on October 30, 2013, she completed it: the entire text of Ulysses - all of its approximately 265,000 words in eighteen episodes - transcribed by hand onto thirty-eight seven-foot tall, two-inch diameter poles: Ulysses as a landscape to physically move through; the novel as literary grove, Ulysses as trees of of life with language as fragrant, hallucinatory bark, and trunks reaching toward the sky.

Each pole has sixteen 'cels' comprised of four pages, a total of sixty-four pages per pole.  The first cel has the first line in it and then Matthews measured down 9" and wrote that line in the next cel and so on, with the last cel containing the last line on the pole. The whole totals thirty-eight poles.

I talked to Charlene Matthews about the piece, which I've observed in progress since she began. Our interview follows.

SJG: This project involved an extraordinary amount of work and time. What inspired you to begin?

CM: I had to do a sculptural piece for an art show Doug Harvey was doing at the Shoshanna Wayne Gallery.  So I wrote a J.G.Ballard short story (Say Goodbye to the Wind) on a pole I had in the back yard for years  which I hate to say was not very good.  I liked how it looked and I liked the idea of taking the words out of the book and putting them onto an object, I stayed with the pole.  I went through my book collection and found Ulysses.  Nothing else would do but IT, and I had never read it.

Key to the poles.

SJG: Did you have any idea when you began just how all-consuming it would turn-out to become?

CM: I knew the project would take me a while, I researched poles and pens and jumped in. As problems occurred I solved them, like how to write and turn the pole smoothly, how to write without twisting my back, how to exercise my hands to keep them from cramping, how to sand the pole just so to accommodate smooth writing.  The eventual  get-up I rigged was pretty amusing. I also began mapping the characters' movements on my walls.

All typos included, as well as flaws in the medium.

SJG: What is the over-riding theme here? What was/is your intent? In short (from a philistine perspective), what's the point?

CM: Initially I envisioned just a large group of poles standing around with writing on them.  But as I was writing, I had visions of the poles being exhibited in many ways, I am going to publish a small edition book of these drawings this year.  Some of them are pretty basic, most are pretty out there ( Irish Jig Dancers, energy windmills, mirrors etc.).

Also, as I was writing my eyes would look at my process and get memorized in the patterns made by the black pen letters on the wood grain, the letters moving around, the grain going up and down. I saw pictures of faces, and animals and odd formations.

The point?  I wanted to make something beautiful.  That is how I chose to spend my time at night.  I did have some very personal reasons for doing this, but they are moot.  It really is just my most current book art project.

Basically the book is all about sex.  I have A LOT to say about this.

SJG: It seems that the process must have in some way paralleled Bloom's journey, his a walk through Dublin, yours a walk through Joyce. Anything to that?

CM: It definitely felt like I was having a love affair with Joyce. 

SJG: You've read the book, a work of art in and of itself. You've turned it into a work of art in another medium. How has it changed your perspective on the book?

CM: As I was absorbing the story, I was also observing his style, and method of storytelling. I understood what was going on in his head as a story teller, writer and artist.  What he was trying to achieve in his Modernism.  This is when I knew that the book had more than a plot line, it had a picture line, the movements of everyone if they could be seen over head would draw out symbols/pictures.  As I was taking the words off the page, I was in this fourth dimension with Joyce.

Draft schematic plan for exhibition.

SJG: And for the viewer/reader, what is it you expect or hope from them? What do you want people to take away from the experience?

CM: What I want people to take away from seeing the poles is the magic of the hand written word, the beauty of handwriting.  The beauty of a handmade object only they can create, by hand writing.

SJG: Are you looking for or have you found an exhibition space for the piece? Any interest yet from galleries?

CM: I am talking to people about exhibiting them, and welcome any inquiries. Depending on the space will depend on how to show them.  Either anchored to the floor or hanging from the ceiling. All can be done.

Pole #38, with last line.

SJG: You said that "basically the book is all about sex.  I have A LOT to say about this." You can't declare that and not pay it off.

CM: Spoiler Alert! It covers every angle of human sexuality. One interesting point about the Ulysses obscenity trial in America is that the case was won the day after Prohibition was lifted.

•  •  •

The case was won on December 6, 1933. Prohibition ended on December 5, 1933 when the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing the 18th Amendment was ratified.

"...And what is cheese? Corpse of milk" - James Joyce, Ulysses . 

And what is Charlene Matthews' Ulysses? Copse of novel.

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Images courtesy of Charlene Matthews, with our thanks.
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Ancient Empress Heats Up Rare Book Bound By A Master

by Stephen J. Gertz

Front wrapper.

Vulgar, insatiably lustful, shrewish, calculating, mean-spirited, born in a brothel and, above all, beautiful, she was the daughter of a bear trainer father and actress-dancer mother from Byzantium (Constantinople). Or, in the sanitized version, she was gorgeous and pious, the daughter of a Miaphysite Christian priest.

Title page.

The Byzantine Roman Empress Theodora, wife of Justinian I, was one of the most influential women of her time. Justinian sought her counsel on politics, and she is credited with influencing social reforms, including the expansion of divorce rights of and property ownership by women, other rights for women, and the rights of children. Born in 497 CE, she reigned from 527 CE until her death at age fifty-one in 548 CE.

She got the royal treatment from French historian Charles Diehl (1859-1944) in a magnificently designed biography, Theodora Imperatrice de Byzance, with Italian Art Nouveau illustrator Manuel Orazi providing the lithographed decorations and images. It was published in Paris by L'Edition D'Art H. Piazza et Cie in 1904 in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies.

Chapter headpiece.

I recently had a copy pass through my hands, bound by René Kieffer of Paris and fit for an empress in a stunning Art Nouveau binding as showy as the sixty full color and gilt lithographed illustrations and decorative borders that frame the text.

Theodora's debut.

Diehl concentrates on the hot ancient empress born in a brothel aspects of Theodora's life as told by the historian Procopius, a scribe for the Byzantine Roman general Belisarius and Theodora's contemporary, in his Historia Arcana (Secret History) which went unpublished for over a thousand years until discovered in the Vatican Library. Within, Procopius claimed that both Justinian and Theodora were "fiends in human form" whose heads, according to witnesses, left their bodies to roam their palace. Had Procopius published the work his severed head would have roamed the palace like a  bowling ball.

Prior to the Historia Arcana Procopius wrote two other accounts of Theodora, twenty years younger than Justinian and his mistress before becoming his wife, both published while Justinian was alive and capable of retribution if he didn't like what he read. Each portrayed her as a courageous and influential (The Wars of Justinian), pious Christian (The Buildings of Justinian). Squeaky clean, that queen. But Procopius became disillusioned and turned bitter against the imperial couple.

You tell me which account is the more likely to appeal to a broad, popular audience:

"Theodora, the second sister, dressed in a little tunic with sleeves, like a slave girl, waited on Comito and used to follow her about carrying on her shoulders the bench on which her favored sister was wont to sit at public gatherings. Now Theodora was still too young to know the normal relation of man with maid, but consented to the unnatural violence of villainous slaves who, following their masters to the theater, employed their leisure in this infamous manner. And for some time in a brothel she suffered such misuse.

"But as soon as she arrived at the age of youth, and was now ready for the world, her mother put her on the stage. Forthwith, she became a courtesan, and such as the ancient Greeks used to call a common one, at that: for she was not a flute or harp player, nor was she even trained to dance, but only gave her youth to anyone she met, in utter abandonment. Her general favors included, of course, the actors in the theater; and in their productions she took part in the low comedy scenes. For she was very funny and a good mimic, and immediately became popular in this art. There was no shame in the girl, and no one ever saw her dismayed: no role was too scandalous for her to, accept without a blush.

Champion with Theodora as prize.

"She was the kind of comedienne who delights the audience by letting herself be cuffed and slapped on the cheeks, and makes them guffaw by raising her skirts to reveal to the spectators those feminine secrets here and there which custom veils from the eyes of the opposite sex. With pretended laziness she mocked her lovers, and coquettishly adopting ever new ways of embracing, was able to keep in a constant turmoil the hearts of the sophisticated. And she did not wait to be asked by anyone she met, but on the contrary, with inviting jests and a comic flaunting of her skirts herself tempted all men who passed by, especially those who were adolescent.

 "On the field of pleasure she was never defeated" (Procopius, Historia Arcana, Chapter 9, trans. by Richard Atwater).

Theodora Imperatrice de Byzance, no shock, went into five editions in its first year of publication but this, the true first, has become scarce. It was reprinted in 1937, and translated into English and published by F. Ungar in New York, 1972.

Binding by René Kieffer.

 

This copy was bound c. 1904 by René Kieffer in full mauve crushed morocco that picks-up the hue from the title page decoration. Multiple fillets and deep purple onlays as borders enclose an Art Nouveau design incorporating gilt-outlined, green onlaid flowers, gilt stems, and gilt-outlined, black onlaid branchwork, with gilt-bordered black onlaid dots. The design is reiterated in the spine compartments. 

Broad mauve morocco turn-ins with gilt rules and cornerpieces grace the inner covers with deep blue-purple patterned silk endpapers. Marbled endleaves follow the silk endpapers. All edges are gilt and the original wrappers are preserved.  Kieffer's ticket is found on the verso of the front endleaf. The whole is housed in the binder's morocco-edged slipcase

Inner front cover turn-in, with Kieffer's stamp.

According to Duncan & De Bartha's Art Nouveau and Art Deco Bookbinding, René Kieffer (1875-1964) worked for ten years at the famed Chambolle-Duru bindery in Paris, specializing in gilding, before establishing his own workshop in 1903. He debuted at the 1903 Salon des Artistes Françcais, and, evolving toward to more modern approach, became a disciple of the great Marius-Michel. At the time of this binding's creation he had begun to incorporate a transitional mix of flowers, vines, and colorful onlays in rather formal compositions, their Art Nouveau motifs retained within symmetrical borders that revealed his classical roots. By the end of World War I he had emerged as one of Paris's leading binders, his work sought after by collectors, his fine workmanship matched by a wide range of of progressive designs.

Endpaper.

The patterned silk endpapers are extraordinary, amongst the most attractive and unusual I've seen; wonderful things happen when light strikes them at various angles.

Kieffer's stamp.

Kieffer's ticket.

Kieffer's design was not particularly original for the period yet the binding's beauty and masterful craftsmanship earned him the right to advertise his work as Art Bindings and the honorific, Binder to the Empress Theodora, sexpot sovereign of the Eastern Roman Empire.

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[KIEFFER, René, binder]. DIEHL, Charles. Theodora Imperatrice de Byzance. Par Chalres Diehl, Charge de Cours a la Faculté des Lettres de L'University de Paris. Illustrations de Manuel Orazi. Paris: L'Edition D'Art H. Piazza et Cie., n.d. [1904].

First edition, limited to 240 copies (of 300) on vélin à la cuve, this being no. 242. Quarto (8 7/8 x 6 1/4 in; 226 x 159 mm). 261, [1] pp. Decorative text borders. Sixty full color and gold lithographed text illustrations, twelve hors texte.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

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A Feast Of Fine Bindings

by Stephen J. Gertz

[Church of England]. The Book of Common Prayer…
London: W. and J. Wilde, 1699.
Binding by Richard Balley.

We've pulled out the white linen tablecloth, set the table with sterling dinnerware,  crystal champagne flutes, and platinum serving tray spread with fine bindings. Bon appetit!

Plunging necklines, sure. Backless bindings?

Seven "backless" bindings by Richard Balley, a late 17th century bookbinder in London, are known to have survived, and the above example is possibly the best preserved: because of their construction they opened poorly, were fragile, and easily fell apart. As such, they have little practical value and are noteworthy only because of their decorative nature; they are, at best, binding oddities. In the early eighteenth century the "wicked old biblioclast" and "the most hungry and rapacious" of book collectors, a bookseller who stood at the center of the London booktrade, John Bagford, wrote of Richard Balley that, "he hath contrived to bind a book that at sight you could not know the fore-edge from the back, both being cut and gilded alike, but this is a mere piece of curiosity, but still shows the genius of the workman."

FRENAUD, André. Enorme Figure de la Déesse Raison.
Paris: Joseph Zichieri, 1951.
Binding by Pierre-Lucien Martin.

Bound in 1967 in black goatskin after a design by Pierre-Lucien Martin (1913-1985) the above book is one of only twenty-four copies on papier pur chiffon d'Auvergne from a total edition of only thirty-four copies, this being copy no. 28.

Pierre-Lucien Martin studied bookbinding with Charles Chanat and design with Robert Bonfils and worked for several binders until winning the Prix de la Reliure Originale after World War II and opening his own bindery. Such was the demand for his work that he had to step away from actual binding and employ others as forwarders and finishers to execute his designs.

As here, lettering, multi-colored onlays, and trompe-l'oeil effects characterize much of his work

SUARES, André. Cirque.
Paris: Ambroise Vollard, 1933 (but unpublished).
Binding by Paul Bonet, 1956.

André Suarès' Cirque, featuring illustrations by Georges Rouault, was never published as planned. Only five copies, put together from disparate elements as maquettes by binder Paul Bonet between 1956 and 1959, have survived. Bonet designed their bindings, René Desmules forwarded, and André Jeanne finished them. Each is slightly different, a variant of the above example.

LUCIUS APULEIUS. De Cupidinis et Psyches Amoribus fabula anilis.
London: Ballantyne Press for he Vale Press, 1901.
Binding by Sibyl Pye.

Anna Sybella Pye, aka Sibyl, (1879-1958) is considered to be one of the most original bookbinders of the twentieth century. She began binding in 1906, met Charles Ricketts, whose bindings for his Vale Press she greatly admired and became her primary influence. He designed tools especially for her, including a few for this binding but most here are of her own creation. Here and elsewhere she specialized in inlaid bindings, excising the foundation leather and fitting leathers of other colors into the empty space, a much more difficult technique than onlaying, the far simpler and common method of applying thin leather atop the foundation. Her bindings were exhibited in Europe and and here in America. Her best work dates from 1925-1940.

BUNYAN, John. The Pilgrim's Progress.
[Shakespeare Head Press for]:
London: The Cresset Press, 1928.
Binding by Philip Smith, 1972.

Profiles In Binding: Philip Smith was born in 1928 and in 1972 designed the above binding shaped to a head in profile at board's fore-edge, the head in question that of the Pilgrim of title, his progress limned in the elaborate scenes symbolically depicted in different leathers.

In 1957, Smith joined the bindery of Douglas Cockerell & Son (Sydney Morris Cockerell). In 1961 he established his own shop to work as an creative book artist.

LUCIANUS SAMOSATENSIS. Dialogues.
Paris: Tériade, Théo Schmied, 1951.
Binding by Rose Adler, 1952.

Born in Paris, Rose Adler (1890-1959) designed jewelry, clothes, furniture, toiletry items, even mirrors but she is best known for her bookbinding designs, which later in her career became simplified, relying upon her choice of colors and mix of calf and goatskin leathers. 

She did not execute her binding designs but, rather, depended upon skilled craftsmen of her choice, which, more often than not, was, as here, Guy Raphaël, a long-time collaborator.

[Sammelband of Seven German Protestant Theological Works].
Breslau: Scharffenberg, 1573-1575.

The above volume is bound as a Sechsfächerband, a six-fold binding that can be opened in one of six different directions, revealing one book at a time. These type of bindings are generically known as Vexierbücher (puzzle or tease books, i.e. bindings that vex). As with Balley's backless bindings, multi-fold bindings are structurally weak and fall apart if stared at too hard for too long.

Produced from the mid-sixteenth century forward, they are primarily found on religious and devotional books. Why?

It appears that they provided quiet, unobtrusive amusement during long church sermons. As sacrilegious as this may seem, it's innocence itself compared to playing cards or little games during religious services; two examples of six-fold bindings on devotional books from the mid-late sixteenth century contain little boxes to store cards, etc.

In the late fourteenth century, Jean de Charlier de Gerson (1363-1429), famed doctor of theology, religious orator, and chancellor of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, condemned the playing of cards in church. His complaints were, evidently, ignored. Churchgoers continued to struggle against boredom, whether playing cards, twiddling thumbs, or amusing themselves with curiously bound prayer books.

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All images reproduced from The Wormsley Library: A Personal Selection by Sir Paul Getty (Maggs Bros./Morgan Library, 1999), with our thanks. If you love fine bindings, this book, the catalog to the Morgan Library's exhibition, is a must for your shelf. 

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Of Related Interest:

Magnificent Bindings, Bound To Be Great. 

The Guild of Women Binders, Bound To Be Great.

More Magnificent Bindings, Bound To Be Great.

The $65,000 Binding, Bound To Be Great.

Drop-Dead Gorgeous Bindings, Bound To Be Great.
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An Arts & Crafts Poster For A Bookbinder

by Stephen J. Gertz

Modernist poster madness continues on Booktryst; the goodies at Swann Galleries' recent sale keep piling up. 

TH. H. Molkenboer (1871-1920) designed this poster for Amsterdam bookbinder Elias P. Van Bommel in 1897.

After completing his studies in Amsterdam, Molkenboer worked in various fields of the Applied Arts including pottery and book ornamentation. This  poster, portraying a bookbinder in profile absorbed in his work, is a very rare example of woodblock technique applied to poster art.

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Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.

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Splendid Beauty Reads Book En Plein Air (1895)

by Stephen J. Gertz

A nude woman, languid upon a sheet in a pastoral setting, with a gown loosely draped across her lower body, is deeply engrossed in a book.

The book she's reading is, presumably, Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, specifically the Edition de Deux Mondes published in Paris, 1895 by the Société des Beaux Arts and illustrated by Raphael Collin. 

In the movie version, the camera would track over the woman's shoulder and move into the book, whereupon the text would dissolve into scene one. Here, she is actually in the book, a comely prelude to the text, in three states of dishabille ala book, color, sepia, and red tint.

Then we meet Chloe...

...And Daphnis and Chloe.

They are bound together in love and leather within a sumptuous azure crushed morocco binding lavishly gilt and inlaid in an Art Nouveau design, the covers with a large central fleur-de-lys in gilt and maroon morocco within an elaborate frame of lily bouquets and garlands inlaid in maroon, orange, and white. 

The spine is gilt in compartments, the smaller ones at head and tail with an inlaid maroon fleur-de-lys, with a large central compartment containing a spray of lilies in maroon and white, and two compartments with gilt titling.  The inner boards feature broad gilt dentelles with elaborate floral and foliate decoration.

 

Burnt orange morocco doublures grace the inner covers, the front doublure featuring an oval inset of white kidskin  with a hand-colored engraving of a female figure. The endpapers are of ivory moiré silk.

ABPC notes that only one copy of this very strictly limited edition of Daphnis and Chloe, translated into English from the 1559 French translation (Les amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloe) of the original Greek by Jacques Amyot, tutor to the sons of Henry II and Bishop of Auxerre, and identically bound, has come to auction since 1975.

A luxury volume attractively printed on Japanese vellum with boldly wide margins, it is gorgeously illustrated with a series of engravings that were considered to be some of the most attractive of the period. In a list published in 1895 and cited by Gordon N.. Ray in The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914, the Collin-illustrated Daphnis and Chloe, first issued in 1890, came in fourth in a survey to determine the ten best modern French illustrated books. 

The edition under notice appears to have been produced a few years later, as part of a series of  deluxe volumes of literary works illustrated by some of the best contemporary artists, and issued by the Sociétié de Beaux Arts in a Salon Édition of 500 copies, an Édition Artistique of 75 copies, and, as here, an Édition de Deux Mondes of 20 copies. The identical  binding design was used for the Sociétié's 1895 twenty-copy Édition de Deux Mondes of Flaubert's A Simple Heart.

Louis-Joseph-Raphael Collin aka Raphael Collin (1850 -1916) was a French painter and illustrator associated the symbolist movement. He studied at the School of St. Louis, then at Verdun, where he was a classmate of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who grew to become a close friend. Collin later went to Paris where he became a student of William Bouguereau, then joined his friend Bastien-Lepage in Cabanel. Collin was a genre painter of nudes, portraits, decorative compositions, and a book illustrator. He exhibited at the Salon beginning in 1873 and won several awards.

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LONGUS. Daphnis and Chloe. With Illustrations by Raphael Collin. Preface by Jules Claretie. Paris: Société des Beaux Arts, 1895.

Edition de Deux Mondes, limited to twenty copies only, this copy indicated with a star. Quarto (10 5/8 x 7 7/8 in; 270 x 200 mm). xvi, 166 pp. Printed on velin. With eleven in-text illustrations in three states (full color, black and white, and single color) and twelve plates in two states, one color and one black and white, all with tissue guards.

Cf. Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914, p. 377.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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A Bookbinding Workshop In 1840

by Stephen J. Gertz

This busy image of a nineteenth century bookbinding workshop c. 1840 is one of thirty hand-colored lithographed plates depicting twenty-nine trades and professions issued in 30 Werkstätten von Handwerkern by Jacob Ferdinand Schreiber, a leading German publisher of children's books.

Originally published c. 1840, this, the 1844 second edition, was greatly expanded from the first, which only contained twelve plates. Included here are views of potters; sculptors and masons; farriers; nailsmiths; locksmiths; coppersmiths; plumbers; cutlers; tinsmiths; bell founders; blacksmiths; gold and silver smiths; carpenters; coopers; turners; butchers; bakers; ropers; soap makers; tanners; shoemakers; saddlers; brush makers; drapers; tailors; milliners; weavers; and, in Booktryst propinquity, bookbinders. 

Each unsigned plate features a central image of craftsmen at work bordered with the primary tools of their trade.

The book - highly sought-after and rare with OCLC recording only nine copies in institutional holdings worldwide - is complete with an accompanying sixteen-page text booklet that is often lacking when copies find their way into the marketplace. But, according to ABPC, no copies have come to auction within the last twenty-eight years.

A copy, however, recently found its way into - and immediately out of -  circulation. It sold for $16,500.

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SCHREIBER, J.F. 30 Werkstätten von Handwerkern. Nebst ihren hauptsächlichsten Werkzeugen und Fabrikaten. Mit erklärenden Text. Zweite Auflage. Esslingen am Neckar: J.F. Schreiber, 1844. Second edition. Oblong folio (335 x 425 mm). Lithographed title page, thirty hand-colored lithographed plates. 16 pp text booklet inserted.

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Image courtesy of Antiquariaat Forum, with our thanks.

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