Bound by the Guild Of Women Binders and hand-coloured by Gloria Cardew. One of just 250 deluxe large paper copies. Large octavo. Sumptuously bound by the Guild of Women Binders in red full morocco, attractively gilt tooled with a scrolled flower and leaf design across the spine and boards, wide gilt tooled inner dentelles, olive silk doublures, top edge gilt, the edges untrimmed. Binder’s signature to front free endpaper verso. Thirty-two plates by Hugh Thomson, all hand-coloured for the Guild Of Women Binders by Gloria Cardew. Gloria Cardew’s ticket to the front free endpaper verso, and Frank Karslake’s ticket to the rear free endpaper recto.
 
A clean, near fine copy.
 
An exceptional example of the contribution of the Guild Of Women Binders to the art of the book. The binding is of very fine red morocco, with intricate gilt tooling. Gloria Cardew, long thought to be a pseudonym, was employed by Frank Karslake to hand-colour books for his exhibitions, and for some books he offered for sale in catalogues. It has been suggested that ’Gloria Cardew’ was in fact Constance Karslake, one of the Guild’s pre-eminent binders. Books both bound by the Guild and coloured by Cardew are relatively uncommon in commerce.