1900 HAMPSTEAD BINDERY. Stephen Phillips. Marpessa. Given as Valentine's Day Gift.

An absolute jewel, and a previously untraced binding by the famed Hampstead Bindery, associated with the Guild of Women Binders.

The Guild of Women Binders was an organization founded in 1898 by Frank Karslake, a London bookseller and also founder of the Hampstead Bindery, to promote and distribute the work of women bookbinders and instituted training programs to teach other women. He believed "having an eye for the beautiful," women were more sensitive binders artistically. They ceased operations in 1904 due to business ineptitude but left a lasting legacy of remarkable bindings.

The American Bookbinders Museum commenting on their work wrote, “Women have been closely associated with the needle arts for time immemorial. They have also closely associated with the hand-sewing of books, but their role in the design and production of books beyond the hand-binding era has been more uncertain.  However, it is indisputable that one of the pinnacles of early 20th century decorative bookbinding is the corpus of work produced by the Guild of Women Binders. These women provided some of the most technically adept and unique designs of the era by combining stylistic contemporary designs with sensitive color work.”

[Hampstead Bindery]. Phillips, Stephen. Phillip Connard [Illustrator]. Marpessa. London and New York. 1900. 47pp.

Measuring just 4.25 x 5.25 inches, the present binding is of the absolute highest order of their output. In terms of its near miniscule production, we trace nothing comparable in their known corpus of work.

Each panel is, both front and back, dyed in a beautiful russet base crushed morocco with over 40 onlays in olive and chocolate present on each side, making over 80 onlays to the boards. The elaborate foliated primary geometrical decoration on each side, each comprised of nearly 200 leaves, are then populated with both dot matrix and variable circular tooling numbering more than 1000 per side. The spine is also composed of onlays, foliates, and circular and dot matrices offset by a simple arts and crafts stylized "marpessa." The board edges contain a single line and dot gold tool. The text block edges are gilt in gold and then tooled with beautiful unstructured fields of circular and dot matrices. Pastedowns then transition to a much more traditional arts and crafts poppy pattern with some color fading to olive leather, russet onlays to poppies. Each endpaper neatly tooled with four simple hearts, one to each corner, then tooled "The Hampstead Bindery." 

Very nicely preserved. The front board has been professionally re-attached using fully reversible materials. Some very minor rubbing and slightest nicks at extremities, green color fade on green morocco pastedowns. Small nicks at head of endsheets, chip to lower right corner of title page, early 1909 Santa Barbara Valentine's Day [February 14] inscription at head of title. 

The most similar examples we trace would be The Forsaken Merman executed in 1901 and offered at Waverly Auctions in 2022 where it fetched $6,250. It is far less elaborate design and in less well-preserved condition, but stylistically the most similar we can locate. Likely executed by the same person as our example. Also see the second example with similar poppy and foliate designs to the morocco pastedowns in our volume. It sold for over $12,000 at Swann in 2021.