Lot 17 email save

Lucretius.De rerum natura,Ashendene,b'ing

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one of 80 copies on handmade Batchelor paper, printed in red and black in Subiaco type, 6 initials by hand by Graily Hewitt, the first in gold, the rest in blue, bound in midnight blue goatskin, by Ivor Robinson, tooled in gilt with abstract shapes across both boards, spine and onto doublures, titled in gilt at foot of spine, black calf doublures, dun suede flyleaves and blue endpapers, g.e., signed at foot of rear doublure "IR 90", midnight blue goatskin-backed brown cloth chemise, spine titled in gilt and slightly faded, with mounted bookplate of John Yeatman Greig and beautifully-written A.L.s. to him from the Birmingham bookseller William Downing concerning the book loose in brown cloth portfolio, together in brown cloth slip-case, 4to, 280 x 192mm., Ashendene Press, 1913.

***"The finest of the pre-war Ashendenes". Colin Franklin Ivor Robinson arranged for Mr.van der Marck to acquire this book from Colin Franklin as he was particularly keen to bind this major Ashendene. The design suggests free-floating nuclei, invading even the book's inside, and scattered about without symmetry or apparent order. The tooling, in two thicknesses of gold leaf, is taken across the spine and around the edges of the boards to create, in the binder's words, "echo effects". Upon delivery he commented, " I feel that this is as close as I have ever got to the Ashendene spirit." He further explained that his nuclei derived from pebbles picked up on Aldeburgh beach in Suffolk. Exhibited: The Art of the Contemporary Bookbinding, Bibliotheca Wittockiana, Brussels; Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague; Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, 1997, p.119, repr..

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