The Book of Ruth

Quarto. [32] pp., illus. Limited edition, one of 160 copies, this copy out of series. Bound by Katy Starr-Baum in tan goatskin; textblock is sewn on meeting guards with hand-embroidered silk endbands; binding with Hebrew lettering made up of hand-tooled gold dots which extend to the top edges of boards and headcaps; edge-to-edge hand-painted doublures and free endpapers. Housed in clamshell box. A fine copy. A lovely book by Robert Buchert at his Tryst Press, printed on purpose-made paper by the printer with a barley ear watermark and in Buchert's Psalter type. The colophon reports that this is the first book employing Buchert's typeface. Many in-text woodcuts (some full page) embellish the book. Here, beautifully bound in a meaningful way by Starr-Baum who having over the course of a few years learned of her Jewish roots and converted to Judaism, like Ruth, that first convert before her. The Hebrew rendered in gold on the binding reads in the King James version: "And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: they people shall be my people, and they God my God; Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought be death part thee and me." Starr-Baum has been binding books for more than 20 years and is among the most recent recipients of the Fine Binding Diploma of the elite American Academy of Bookbinding.