Description
[003608] Fletcher, William Younger. English Bookbindings in the British Museum WITH Foreign Bookbindings in the British Museum. ill. Griggs, W. [Printer]. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Company, 1895. First Edition. Folio. Hardback. Good. Two volumes, 1895 and 1896 – English Bookbindings in the British Museum – Illustrations of Sixty-Three Examples Selected on Account of Their Beauty or Historical Interest With Introduction and Descriptions WITH Foreign Bookbindings in the British Museum Illustrations of Sixty-Three Examples Selected on Account of Their Beauty or Historical Interest With Introduction and Descriptions.
English Bookbindings – xvii, [1], sixty-six chromolithographic plates by Griggs with accompanying text leaves. Original cloth, later reback, title and author in gilt to spine and upper cover, t.e.g. Plates II, XVII (particularly so), XLI and LI with remnants of tissue guard still adhered or with slight loss to surface, lacking a couple of tissue guards, one with a hole, closed tear to text leaf of plate LX a couple of the text leaves chipped to fore edge. Title in red and black. One of five hundred copies, this being number 369. See Nixon Literature of English Bookbinding and Breslauer Uses of Bookbinding Literature, pages 23 and 31; “describes bindings that are not English, and a few which he includes as foreign in his other volume, are in fact English. Attributions of bindings have often changed, but their reproductions remain no less useful”.
Foreign Bookbindings – xxiv, sixty-five chromolithographic plates by Griggs with accompanying text leaves. Original cloth, later reback, title and author in gilt to spine and upper cover, t.e.g. Closed tear to text leaf of plates XXIX and L, catching text but with no loss, tiny amount of surface loss to plates XXX and LIII, lacking several tissue guards, a few other tissue guards with small tears and holes, inner joints cracked but holding well. Title in red and black. One of five hundred copies, this being number 193. Bookplate of Thomas Fortune Ryan to front paste down. See Breslauer Uses of Bookbinding Literature, pages 23 and 31; “describes bindings that are not English, and a few which he includes as foreign in his other volume, are in fact English. Attributions of bindings have often changed, but their reproductions remain no less useful”.
Twyman, in his magisterial A History of Chromolithography: Printed Colour For All, notes that William Griggs was a pioneer in combining photomechanical processes and chromolithography and that the examples in Fletcher’s books “look astonishingly convincing … [and] set a new standard for the reproduction of bindings, and in their visual authority and tactile qualities have probably never been surpassed” (Twyman, pages 236-237)
Despite a few problems of adhesion from the tissue guards, a decent working pair
A heavy set, overseas postage costs will be significant
Schmidt-Kunsemuller 1035 and 1036 respectively
