F I N E B O O K S & M A N U S C R I P T S
HAND-COLOURED BY GLORIA CARDEW
19. A Midsummer Night’s Dream CARDEW, Gloria; [GUILD OF WOMEN BOOKBINDERS]
Dent, 1895. First edition illustrated by Anning Bell. One of a very small number of cop- ies hand coloured by Gloria Cardew with her label to an initial blank. Bound for the Guild of Women Bookbinders, probably by Annie S. Macdonald, though not signed, in characteristic moulded goatskin, depicting “Puck Fleeing from the Dawn”, after a painting of the same name by Scottish artist David Scott. Fifteen full page illustrations and a further 53 illustrations in the text by Robert Anning Bell, all exquisitely hand coloured by Gloria Cardew. A very good copy indeed, spotting to the page edges, a couple of worm holes at the base of the spine. Overall a well preserved example. [40725] £7,500 An effective combination of Arts & Crafts binding and fine hand colouring with one of Shake - speare’s most enduring works. The principle of Cardew’s hand colouring as a means of adding value was introduced by the enterprising bookseller, Frank Karslake. Having established The Hampstead Bindery and later The Guild of Women Bookbinders to enhance the books he was offering, Karslake employed Cardew’s services to add colour to woodcut illustrations. The process was painstaking and doubtless time consuming but the effect could be spectacular. The labour intensive nature of these productions mean the numbers produced must have been very small and they are now seldom offered in commerce. The binding, though not signed, shows many of the stylistic hallmarks of Annie S. Macdonald, whose work inspired Karslake to form The Guild of Women Bookbinders. Indeed, in his Cat- alogue Of An Exhibition Of Bookbindings By The Guild Of Women Binders... (December 1898), the Anning Bell A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Cardew’s hand-colouring appears as number 206.
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