Feature

Sangorski & Sutcliffe

Famously extravagant jeweled bindings and modern illuminated manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center
Winter 2014 By Stephen Ratcliffe
Moore’s Lalla Rookh
Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
Submitted by meredith on
Famously extravagant jeweled bindings and modern illuminated manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center
Feature
Stephen Ratcliffe
Moore’s Lalla Rookh

Moore’s Lalla Rookh (detail). Bound in orange morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, the front cover has a symbolic device of “The Paradise and the Peri” and numerous colored morocco inlays. 

The remarkable story of Sangorski & Sutcliffe started in 1901, when two young, talented bookbinders were fired by their employer. At that time in London there were numerous, well established binderies—the most famous being Riviere, which had over a hundred employees. The two men were let go purely because of a decrease in orders for decorative leather bindings. Nothing daunted, Francis Sangorski and George Sutcliffe set up in business for themselves in a Bloomsbury attic. Within five years they were well on their way to becoming the most famous and fashionable bookbinders in England, receiving orders from King Edward VII. Their bindings became ever more elaborate, combining innovative designs with the finest craftsmanship, which is why some now refer to S&S as the Rolls Royce of binders. Around 1905 they started to add jewels to their most elaborate works—small, uncut stones—invisibly mounted and their settings covered by colored morocco inlays, another specialty. The first of these bindings had just six jewels, but they steadily made their bindings more and more ornate. 

The Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin owns more than eighty Sangorski & Sutcliffe bindings, many of which are comparatively plain, but some of which are the sumptuous, jeweled bindings that had become the hallmark of S&S style. The Ransom Center is also lucky enough to have acquired through donation several S&S manuscripts. Richard Oram, the Ransom Center’s associate director and Hobby Foundation librarian, said, “The Ransom Center is usually associated with the manuscripts of Tennessee Williams or David Foster Wallace rather than the lavishly illuminated manuscripts on vellum produced by Sangorski & Sutcliffe and Riviere in the early part of the twentieth century. Yet the Center owns quite a few of these special manuscripts, including a volume of Nature Poems and Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh in jeweled bindings. The latter were donated in the 1930s by Miriam Lutcher Stark, a wealthy collector from Orange, Texas. While tastes in fine bindings may have changed substantially in the past century, these are still drop-dead gorgeous objects.”

An illuminated manuscript of Poe’s Selected Poems by Alberto Sangorski on sixteen vellum pages. A particularly fine title page has a portrait miniature of the poet—signed AS 1911—and a striking eagle and “stars and stripes” shield. With four full-page and other miniatures, it was bound by Riviere in green morocco / Shelley’s The Sensitive Plant and Other Poems is another Alberto Sangorski manuscript from the Phoebe Boyle collection, on no fewer than sixty-two vellum pages illuminated throughout. The title page has a portrait miniature, two miniatures, as well as numerous borders, and illuminated and colored initials. It was bound by Riviere in brown morocco. 

Images Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Moore’s Lalla Rookh (detail). Bound in orange morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, the front cover has a symbolic device of “The Paradise and the Peri” and numerous colored morocco inlays. 

Images Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Two more of the Ransom’s S&S manuscripts, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Hermit and James Russell Lowell’s The Vision of Sir Launfal, are handwritten in calligraphy on parchment by Alberto Sangorski (Francis’ older brother) with decorative borders and illuminated miniatures. Around 1905, Alberto had begun to produce illuminated manuscripts on vellum. These had elegant calligraphy, illuminated initials, and watercolor miniature paintings—all his own work. The early manuscripts were done for S&S, but in 1910, Alberto fell out with his brother and went to work for Riviere. 

As for Francis and George, from 1909–1911, they worked on the “Great Omar”—a luxurious, large-format binding of the Rubaiyat with six separate designs on the covers, doublures, 1,050 jewels, and more than 5,000 morocco inlays. Alas, this book was lost on the RMS Titanic in 1912, and then, a few months later, in July of 1912, Francis drowned saving another swimmer’s life. Sutcliffe carried on the business, producing some very beautiful jeweled bindings, but the advent of World War I meant that the glory days were over. He died in 1936, and the firm changed hands and names.

Collectors of fine bindings were (and are still today) well aware of S&S. One in particular, a Brooklyn widow named Phoebe A.D. Boyle, had acquired forty-five S&S jeweled bindings and thirty-one of Alberto’s illuminated manuscripts during the 1910s and early 1920s. The collection was sold by Anderson’s New York in 1923. It was by far the greatest array of these masterpieces ever put together and can never be replicated. The Ransom Center, however, has four of her best, now reunited in Texas. According to Oram, “three of these books were donated by Mrs. Miriam Lutcher Stark, the fourth by William H. Koester. We are most grateful to these far-sighted collectors for preserving the future of these four books.”