First edition. Quarto. Copy number 8 of 500 copies. Bound in the publisher’s green cloth, lettered gilt to the spine. Fifty extraordinary reproductions of binding work on plates, under tissue guards, printed by chromolithography, and then foil-blocked with gold leaf, resulting in an impression to mirror the tooling on the original bindings. 
 
A very good, ex-library copy. Bookplate of Bristol University Library to front pastedown, with small withdrawn inkstamp to base, blindstamp to title page, and small withdrawn inkstamp to title page verso. Rectangular mark to base of spine, presumably where a library label has been removed.
 
The very rare illustrated record of the work of the Guild Of Women-Binders and The Hampstead Bindery.
 
“A first glance through the plates in this volume, all of the illustrative of accomplished work, will convey a pleasurable sense of harmonious colouring and beauty of form. On closer examination they will be found abounding in richness of detail, in painstaking excellence of workmanship; the designs for the most part formed in what seems an almost infinite variety of graceful interlinear patterns. Still further scrutiny, taking the binding in relation to the character of the book that it enshrines, will bring out what is perhaps the most attractive quality of many of these bindings — a subtle harmony between the body and soul of the volume, which alone places the work beyond the domain of even the most exalted artisanship.” (from Anstruther’s introduction to this volume).