New Catalogue Celebrates Art and Craft of Beautiful Book Production and Private Press Works
Peter Harrington
The Poems of John Keats, Kelmscott Press, 1894
A Thing of Beauty is a celebration of the art and craft of book production featuring many diverse examples of fine bindings, illustrations, illumination as well as innovations in book decoration, brought together in a new catalogue from Peter Harrington.
Kelmscott Press books include a Chaucer bound in an art-nouveau style, a hand-coloured The Well at the World’s End, and John Keats' poems in a Zaehnsdorf exhibition binding.
There are multiple examples of printing a book on pages of real vellum from the 16th to the 20th century, such as the Theuerdanck of Emperor Maximilian I and the Haggadah of Artur Szyk. Calligraphic illuminated manuscripts on vellum can also be found by Alberto Sangorski and Sidney Farnsworth.
Innovations in the art of illustration and colour printing are celebrated, from chromolithography of the 19th century to the vibrant pochoir of Seguy in a rare inscribed copy of his Insectes portfolio. The catalogue also features the Cranach Hamlet with the inventively printed woodcuts by Edward Gordon Craig.
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Peter Harrington
The Woodman and the Nightingale and To Night by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alberto Sangorski (calligrapher & illuminator, 1916)
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Peter Harrington
Insectes by Emile-Allain Seguy (1929)
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Peter Harrington
In Powder and Crinoline: Kay Nielsen (1913)
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Peter Harrington
[Theuerdanck] Die geuerlicheiten und einsteils der geschichten des loblichen streytparen und hochberümbten helds und ritters herr Tewrdannckhs by Melchior Pfintzing (1517)
The work of women is highlighted including the original copperplates for In Powder and Crinoline by Kay Nielsen (1913) made for the four-colour separation process used to produce the final image published opposite p. 110 in the book. Other highlights include:
Cedric Chivers bindings executed by Alice Shepard and by Dorothy Carlton Smyth
“Everything in this catalogue is a unique piece of loveliness which has survived because it has been treasured," said Sammy Jay and Dr Philip Errington, Senior specialists at Peter Harrington and co-curators of A Thing of Beauty. "To be the temporary custodians of such enduring bowers of beauty is indeed a privilege, and one that we joyfully share with you."
![[Theuerdanck] Die geuerlicheiten und einsteils der geschichten des loblichen streytparen und hochberümbten helds und ritters herr Tewrdannckhs by Melchior Pfintzing (1517)](https://cdn.finebooksmagazine.com/sites/default/files/media-images/2024-09/pfintzing.jpg)
