The Creative Craftsman

£900 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Near fine, slightest of fading to spine and faint handling marks to covers. Pencil attribution to Womesley to ffep. with date. Edward Womesley was a surveyor turned amateur bookbinder, whose friendship with Bernard Middleton lead him to joining the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders (forerunners of today’s Designer Bookbinders), where be held the position of secretary until 1967. Following Womesley’s death in 1982, his library was acquired by Maggs Bros. and the present binding features in Maggs catalogue 1908 issued in 1989. A fabulously thoughtful and unusual binding on John Farleigh’s survey of British craft, which includes chapters on Guido Morris and Sandy Cockerell. Womesley’s use of alternating hand and head forms in gilt and black onlay both celebrates the intertwined skills of hand and mind which mark the finest craftspeople, and cunningly reflects the printed epigraph by T.S. Eliot: ’Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow…’

• Binding: Hardcover

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