KELMSCOTT PRESS: CHAUCER, Geoffrey.

£225,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Works, now newly imprinted. First Kelmscott edition, one of 425 copies on paper, in a superb onlaid morocco binding by Birdsall. The spectacular binding is reproduced as a colour illustration in the Petersons' census of copies of the Kelmscott Chaucer (plate 7). The Kelmscott Chaucer was the product of close collaboration between Morris and Burne-Jones over four years.Burne-Jones spent his Sundays on the book's 87 illustrations, working long hours in fear that Morris, whose health deteriorated alarmingly, might die before the project was finished. Burne-Jones's delicate pencil drawings were photographed by Emery Walker's firm, and the young Birmingham artist Robert Catterson-Smith worked over them in Chinese white and Indian ink, rendering them more like woodcuts. The designs were then transferred to wooden blocks and engraved by William Harcourt Hooper. The book was completed just before Morris's death. Burne-Jones called it "a pocket cathedral it is so full of design", and "the finest book ever printed; if W.M. had done nothing else it would be enough."The Birdsall bookbinding firm was founded when William Birdsall (c.1750-1826) bought the bookselling and bookbinding business of John Lacy & Son in Northampton in 1792. The firm was sold in 1844 to William's great-nephew, Anthony Birdsall the elder (1819-1893). At this time the bookbinding side of the business was expanded to become the firm's main activity. The business passed to Anthony's son, Richard (1842-1909), who t

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