A Bookbinder's Miscellany: Essays on fine binding with an introduction by Sam Ellenport

Middleton, Bernard C.

Published by Alan Isaac Rare Books, Oxford, 2015

About this Item

8vo (23.5 cm), XVII, 114 pp, plates. Publisher's cloth, gilt-lettered front board and spine. A collection of twenty-two essays and articles by Bernard C. Middleton (1924-2018), the celebrated London bookbinder and author of A History of English Craft Bookbinding Technique (1963) and The Restoration of Leather Bindings (1972), gathering together pieces mostly written in the mid-twentieth century that had long lain scattered and out of print in obscure periodicals, together with two essays written specially for this volume. The contents range from technical instruction -- "Notes on the Hand Sewing of Books," "The Supported French Groove," "The Art of Covering with Leather" -- to critical and reflective pieces on the state of the craft, including "The Trade Versus The Rest," "Controversial Thoughts on the Decoration of Fine Bindings," "Fine Bindings: the Present and the Future," and "Sixty Years of Progress and Decline," as well as book reviews, an essay on eighteenth-century Irish feather-tooled bindings, notes on craft bookbinding in Paris, and a memorial tribute to fellow binder Thomas Harrison. In his introduction, publisher Sam Ellenport situates Middleton's career against the vanished world of large post-war binderies and formal apprenticeship, crediting Middleton, alongside a handful of contemporaries, with helping to establish the modern tradition of independent "design binding". A prefatory note by Alan Isaac describes Middleton, still working in his nineties in Clapham, London, as a figure of "totemic appeal to the tribe of binders." Illustrated with photographs including a portrait of Middleton in his study. A valuable primary-source collection for the history and practice of twentieth-century English hand bookbinding.

Seller Inventory # 008917

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Bookbinder's Miscellany: Essays on fine binding with an introduction by Sam Ellenport
• Publisher: Alan Isaac Rare Books, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY
  • Bookbinding