THE SONG OF SOLOMON

London: [Printed by William Clowes and Sons for the] Guild of Women Binders, ca. 1897]. No. 13 OF 100 COPIES on Japanese paper. 290 x 220 mm. (11 3/8 x 8 5/8"). 1 p.l., 16 pp. plus illustrations.
SUPERB CONTEMPORARY DARK BLUE MOROCCO, ELEGANTLY GILT, BY THE GUILD OF WOMEN BINDERS (stamp-signed on front free endleaf), covers tooled in an Art Nouveau design featuring a large central anthemium of flowers rising on a long stem from a stippled base, this central ornament flanked by three long-stemmed irises on either side, flat spine with vertical gilt titling, a single fillet, and small circles, MATCHING BLUE MOROCCO DOUBLURES tooled with a particularly attractive complex central oval ornament encompassing considerable stippling and 20 large stylized flowers on curvilinear stems, vellum free endleaves with gilt hearts at the corners, top edge gilt. In a fine matching folding morocco box lined with pale blue suede, gilt titling on its spine. With 12 pleasing plates by H. Granville Fell on Japanese paper, made from pencil drawings in the Art Nouveau style, as well as four different illustrated titles and a vignette closing leaf. ◆AN IMMACULATE COPY.

Among the historically significant productions done by members of the Guild of Women Binders, this sparkling copy of a specially printed edition of "Song of Songs" stands out because of its fine paper and its unusually large dimensions. The Guild was a group of British female artisans responsible for distinctively innovative binding decoration during a golden moment at the very end of the 19th century. The bookseller Frank Karslake established the Guild in 1898 in order to give an organizational identity to a group of women already at work binding books in various parts of Britain, often in their own homes. Karslake first became interested in women binders when he visited the Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl's Court in 1897, held to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. He was impressed with a number of bookbindings at the Jubilee exhibit, prominent among them being those of Mrs. Annie MacDonald of Edinburgh, and he invited the women to exhibit their work in his shop at 61 Charing Cross Road. The Guild was formed soon thereafter, when some of the women named Karslake as their agent. The Guild was closely associated with the Hampstead Bindery, the two groups exhibiting bindings together at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 and elsewhere. According to Tidcombe, "Karslake liked special copies of books that sold for a higher price," and this is one of nine titles he had "printed for the Guild on Japanese vellum." Though our binding--which is considerably bigger than most of the Guild's volumes--is not signed by an individual, the design is similar to that of a less elaborate binding for this same work, pictured on page 125 of Tidcombe and identified as the work of Constance Karslake, Frank's eldest daughter. The present binding provides a clear representation of the predominate style used by Guild members, with nearly everything attenuated, curved, blunted, and melted away from the square or jagged, with careful avoidance of panelling and more rigorous forms of decoration like diapering. The illustrations by Herbert Granville Fell (1872-1951) accentuate the voluptuous nature of this beloved book of Scripture, and the entire production is a fine example of fin-de-siècle artistry. Finally, one could scarcely hope to find a more well-preserved example than the present copy..