A Book of Commandments, for the Government of the Church of Christ, Organized According to Law, on the 6th of April, 1830

160pp. Vegisemo-Quarto [12.5cm]. Full red leather with gilt stamped decoration. Housed in a beautiful custom clamshell that also includes a separately bound foreword by Peter Crawley. This edition is limited to 29 lettered copies. It is hand-sewn and bound using techniques consistent with historical styles. The deluxe edition also includes two letterpress printed title page variants for framing or display, as well as space for a leaf. This copy is unnumbered. A fine letterpress replica of the 1833 Book of Commandments, the most sought after LDS text, of which only twenty-nine copies are known to exist. The plates used for the replicas were scanned from the Wilford Woodruff copy. The paper for the book was made by hand at Tryst Press using linen and cotton fibers with an oak leaf watermark. The books are printed using photopolymer plates on a Vandercook proofing press. "With the prospects of a Mormon press came the possibility of printing Joseph Smith's revelation and making them more widely available to the members of the Church. At a conference in Hiram, Ohio, in November 1831, it was resolved to print the revelations in book form under the title Book of Commandments in an edition of 10,000. Five months later, when Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and other journeyed to Independence with paper for the new Mormon press, the size of the edition was reduced to 3000. Five signatures comprising 160 pages had been printed when the printing shop was destroyed on July 20, 1833 by an angry anti-Mormon mob. Sheets of the unfinished book were salvaged from the wreckage of the shop; some were collected as they blew about the streets of Independence. From these sheets a few copies of the Book of Commandments were assembled. Twenty-nine copies have surfaced in 176 years, most in homemade bindings - a reflection of the salvaged nature of the book. The title page occurs in two states, with and without an ornamental border. Just what the completed Book of Commandments would have contained is a matter of conjecture. Considering those revelations published earlier in the Star and those published subsequently in the Doctrine and Covenants, it would appear that the completed book would have contained at least one and possibly two additional signatures." - Peter Crawley.…