The Property of the late Lord Kenyon, CBE Sold by Order of the Executors
Born on September 13, 1917, Lloyd Tyrell-Kenyon was the elder son of the 4th Baron Kenyon. He succeeded to the peerage at the age of ten. Despite the disadvantage of poor eyesight, he started collecting books while an Eton school boy and became a jealous guardian of the family library which included a Caxton and many rare STC imprints. Chairman of the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, 1966-88, he also sat on the Royal Commission for Historical Manuscripts from 1966 until shortly before his death on 16 May last year, giving both the generous and disinterested service of a true bibliophile.
As a collector, Lord Kenyon took a special interest in Pynson -- a brave, almost foolhardy choice; but within twenty years he had assembled a collection which included a unique Pynson Aesop c. 1520, the Pynson Chaucer of 1526, and the only known copy on vellum of Dionysius Carthusianus, The Mirror of Golde, c. 1506. This latter is now in the British Library, for Kenyon was no Croesus and not all he bought was he able to retain as other interests overtook him. His collection of early liturgies, English and Continental, is well known; many are now at Lambeth Palace, and it would give him satisfaction to know that his earliest Sarum missal, Venice 1494, with a medieval Welsh provenance, has recently found a permanent home in the National Library of Wales. He also had a taste for "moderns" and twentieth-century illustrated books, including work by Reynolds Stone, Gertrude Hermes and Kyffin Williams, all personal friends, and he played a leading role in the relaunch of the Gregynog Press in 1978. He enjoyed commissioning modern designer bindings, most notably a set of John Sparrow's Lapidaria, each volume the work of a different artist. At home, he led the life of a country gentleman, and as horse-breeder and owner of Rupertino, he also made room on his shelves for the occasional Renaissance work on farriery or bit-book. His wide-ranging yet carefully-discriminating interests are evident even in the limited selection of reference books and other works from the library now being sold.
ART REFERENCE
BLOMFIELD, Reginald. A History of Renaisssance Architecture in England, 1500-1800, London: George Bell, 1897, 2 volumes, 4°, plates and illustrations (some spotting), original buckram-backed cloth -- Aymer VALLANCE. The Old Colleges of Oxford; Their architectural history illustrated and described, London: B.T. Batsford, [n.d.], 2°, plates and illustrations (occasional spotting), original cloth gilt (lightly rubbed); and 14 others on English architecture. (16)
細節
BLOMFIELD, Reginald. A History of Renaisssance Architecture in England, 1500-1800, London: George Bell, 1897, 2 volumes, 4°, plates and illustrations (some spotting), original buckram-backed cloth -- Aymer VALLANCE. The Old Colleges of Oxford; Their architectural history illustrated and described, London: B.T. Batsford, [n.d.], 2°, plates and illustrations (occasional spotting), original cloth gilt (lightly rubbed); and 14 others on English architecture. (16)