Details
The Whole Art of Bookbinding, containing Valuable Recipes for Sprinkling, Makbling, [sic] Colouring, &c. Oswestry: Printed and Sold for the Author by N. Minshall, 1811.
12o (162 x 93 mm). Half-title. 60 pages, remainder of volume filled with lined paper. Contemporary mottled calf (spine defective); cloth folding case. Provenance: Nicolas Barker (pencil gift inscriptions on pastedown to "Howard" and Bernard Breslauer: "and now passed on to another dear friend and lover of bookbinding... 10 Dec 1984").
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST ENGLISH BOOK ON BOOKBINDING. Pollard and Potter give three possibilities for the author of this anonymously published work: Nathaniel Minshall, the printer; Henry Parry, holder of the copyright and probable author of The art of bookbinding, 1818; and W. Price of Oswestry who is recorded as being in business in Shropshire from ca 1804 to 1831. "The first English book devoted wholly to bookbinding. It is very much a working bookbinder's notebook put in order for publication and owes little to the encyclopedias. Forwarding is dealt with very briefly; the most detailed sections are those on preparing colours for sprinkling book edges and on the various methods of sprinkling and marbling the leather covers. There is a helpful section on gold tooling and a chapter on stationery binding, including gilding and marbling edges" (Pollard and Potter, Early Bookbinding Manuals, no. 89). RARE: NUC locates only 8 copies. Mejer 89; Middleton The Binder's Art 12.
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FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST ENGLISH BOOK ON BOOKBINDING. Pollard and Potter give three possibilities for the author of this anonymously published work: Nathaniel Minshall, the printer; Henry Parry, holder of the copyright and probable author of The art of bookbinding, 1818; and W. Price of Oswestry who is recorded as being in business in Shropshire from ca 1804 to 1831. "The first English book devoted wholly to bookbinding. It is very much a working bookbinder's notebook put in order for publication and owes little to the encyclopedias. Forwarding is dealt with very briefly; the most detailed sections are those on preparing colours for sprinkling book edges and on the various methods of sprinkling and marbling the leather covers. There is a helpful section on gold tooling and a chapter on stationery binding, including gilding and marbling edges" (Pollard and Potter, Early Bookbinding Manuals, no. 89). RARE: NUC locates only 8 copies. Mejer 89; Middleton The Binder's Art 12.