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4to (29 cm). 122, [2] pp. Original publisher's blue cloth, pictorial paper label to upper board printed in red depicting a colonial-era bindery interior (minor shelf-wear). First edition, published to commemorate the gift of the Frederick E. Maser Collection of American Bookbindings to the Bryn Mawr College Library and issued in conjunction with the exhibition of the collection. An important institutional catalogue documenting more than two centuries of American bookbinding, from the colonial period through the revival of the hand-bound book at the beginning of the twentieth century. The sixty-two catalogue entries present a representative survey of American binding practice from the earliest identifiable native craftsmen ? including John Ratcliff, among the first recorded American bookbinders -- through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century trade bindings, decorative work, fine bindings, and the renewed artistic movement associated with the Arts and Crafts era. The volume opens with a personal introduction by Frederick E. Maser, reflecting on the pleasures and responsibilities of collecting bindings and on the human dimension of the craft preserved through individual books. An editorial preface by John Dooley and James Tanis places the Maser Collection within the developing scholarship of American bookbinding history, discussing the early interest of the Grolier Club, Dorothy Miner's influential Baltimore Museum of Art exhibition of 1957-58, and the pioneering catalogue of the Michael Papantonio Collection prepared by Hannah D. French and Willman Spawn in 1972, to which the present volume serves as a complementary contribution. The principal scholarly essay, "The Evolution of American Binding Styles in the Eighteenth Century," by Willman Spawn, provides a concise historical framework for understanding colonial and early national binding traditions. Spawn examines the development of American styles, materials, tools, decoration, and workshop practices, establishing the context for the catalogue that follows. The sixty-two detailed entries describe individual bindings with information on binder or shop (where known), place and approximate date of execution, structure, leather, tooling, spine decoration, board decoration, edges, turn-ins, endpapers, measurements, and provenance. Numerous illustrations document the variety and quality of the examples, making the work both a reference catalogue and a visual record of an important private collection. A valuable contribution to the literature of American bookbinding and an essential reference for collectors, historians, and institutions concerned with the development of the decorative and artistic binding tradition in the United States. Scarce, particularly outside institutional collections.
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