?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
Guild of Women Binders Exhibition Binding.
A.F. Pollard's Henry VIII, London: Goupil & Co., Fine Art Publishers, 1902; large folio, limited edition, copy number 193 of 250 printed on Japanese paper, illustrated; bound in full dark blue crushed navy morocco ornately decorated on boards and spine with hundreds of onlays in red, ochre, and green leather, ornately tooled in gilt over covers and spine with interlacing lines and gilt stippling in a design by Miss Bromhall and executed by Miss Marriott in 1903, with parchment fly leaves decorated with small gilt hearts at the corners; and full morocco-covered leather inner joints and fully decorated leather-covered inner doublures with gilt decoration and onlays in the same color palette in a slightly different but related design; the outer boards consisting of stylized flower and leaf forms, the inner boards with floral motifs suggesting nasturtiums; signed in gilt on front parchment flyleaf, teg; housed in a slightly ragged buckram trimmed slipcase; 12 3/4 x 10 in.
The Guild of Women Binders was begun in 1898 by bookseller Frank Karslake to provide women avenues to learn the craft and market their work. Karslake's daughter Constance was in charge of the workshop near her father's Hampstead Bindery, accepting women already trained in the arts and enrolling a few dozen women at a time. Although not a successful venture during its short operation, which ended in 1903, the bindings produced by the workshop are masterful examples of the craft decorated with finely executed Art Nouveau designs in gold and goatskin.
