Modern bookbinding practically considered : a lecture read before the Grolier Club of New York, March 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations / by William Matthews.

  • William Matthews
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern bookbinding practically considered : a lecture read before the Grolier Club of New York, March 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations / by William Matthews. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and sweeter ecstasy of pleasure than many more costly objects of art they possess. I pity those who call themselves cultured and with fine art taste who * f cannot take from them shelves some few specimens of first-class modern extra binding. Paris leads in the cultivation of this art, and par¬ ticularly so, it is said, because of the number of small collectors, each one priding himself on the posses¬ sion of a Cape, a Niedree, a Trautz, or of the living artists Lortic and Petit. In England, also, they are awakening to a sense of the secondary position they hold in the practice of the art and by lectures and publications are endeav¬ oring to encourage their binders to exercise their well-known abilities to a higher standard of excel- i lence. And now what are we Americans doing? Fifty years ago there was not a finely bound book, except what by chance had been procured abroad, to be found in any collection in America. Pine binding was an unknown art. But travel and wealth have quickened a desire for rare books and costly bind¬ ings, and given birth to a body of collectors through¬ out the States that I venture to predict will make
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