In 2024 completed a commission on a copy of, “Ernest Gimson: His Life and Work” by W.R. Lethaby, containing an authoritative and insightful study, surveying the life and work of “the greatest of the English artist-craftsmen”. The book was published in 1924 by Shakespeare Head Press in Stratford on Avon, UK and the copy I had was 234 of a limited edition of 500 copies (corrected to 550 copies in enclosed errata slip). The Shakespeare Head Press was a small printing and publishing business and is considered to be one of the finest private presses, along with the Kelmscott, Doves, Golden Cockerel, and Ashendene presses, producing high-quality works.
Ernest William Gimson was an English furniture designer and architect. He is known as one of the most influential designers of the English Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He began his career as an architect but, influenced by the ideas of William Morris, quickly developed a passion for furniture design.
The book contains wood-engravings plus 60 collotype plates of works by Ernest Gimson. Collotype is a photomechanical flat printing process used to produce varying tones and shades, the process involves coating a glass plate in a gelatin. The original book was bound with buckram on the spine and blue paper on the boards, with a paper title label mounted to the spine.
When pulling the book I discovered that the first half of the book was folded sections, the pages had deckled edges and weren’t entirely cut at the top edge of the book (see below left image). The second half was made up of individual sheets (with the collotypes printed on them), which were tipped together onto flimsy paper to make up folded folios (see below right image).
I decided to re-tip the latter part of the book onto new paper strips, opting for Japanese tissue to add more strength. I removed the pages from the paper strips holding them together and edge-pared the pages at the spine edge with a French paring knife. I cut strips of Japanese paper that were about 15mm wide and then tipped a page onto either side of the strip. They were rubbed down with a Teflon folder and then pressed in between silicone release paper and blotting paper to dry.
Some of the deckled edges of the pages were a bit ragged and dirty, and I wanted to have an even look across the book block. I therefore chose to neaten up the existing deckled edges by recutting the deckle a little using a French paring knife. I also worked my way through the collotype pages and added a deckled edge to those too by paring carefully either side of the sheet.
Once I was pleased with the sections, I pricked sewing holes into their folds and then attached them to five linen tapes at the spine edge. Whilst working on the forwarding of the book I was also thinking about what I might do on the cover design and endpapers.
The book contained numerous black and white images and drawings of Ernest Gimson’s designs for a large variety of objects including furniture, metalwork, plaster decoration, embroidery, and more. I purchased a copy of a more recent publication about his work to help me with my research, “Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect” by Annette Carruthers, Mary Greensted and Barley Roscoe (Yale University Press, USA, 2019).
“This study of the renowned designer-maker Ernest Gimson (1864–1919) combines biography with analysis of his work as an architect and designer of furniture, metalwork, plaster decoration, embroidery, and more. It also examines Gimson’s significance within the Arts and Crafts Movement, tracing the full arc of his creative career, ideas, and legacy. Gimson worked in London in the 1880s, joining the circle around William Morris at the Art Workers’ Guild and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He later moved to the Cotswolds, where he opened workshops and established a reputation for distinctive style and superb quality. Gimson’s work influences designers today and speaks directly to ongoing debates about the role of craft in the modern world; this book will be the standard reference for years to come.” (Yale University Press, USA, 2019)
Whilst reading the above publication I was struck by one particular image in the book: a striking cabinet that Ernest Gimson designed for Kenton and Co, which was exhibited in the Art Workers’ Guild in London, 1891.
This piece is now in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The cabinet is made from ebony, with an extensive interlocking marquetry pattern derived from Gimson’s drawings of 13th-century mural paintings in a church in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. It has handmade silver handles and unusual circular trays between the leg rails:
“Composed of simplified but powerfully geometrical forms, the cabinet stands on a light base made of two round trays. Gimson focused his attention on the delicate inlaid decoration of the cabinet doors, using different species of wood (palm tree, orange tree and ebony) in a stylised pattern similar to some of the textile designs later produced by the Wiener Werkstätte. True to the principle of honesty so dear to Ruskin, the inlaid pieces are not glued but fitted together. The inside of the cabinet is made of sycamore and cypress, and the locks made of silver, balsam of Peru and white metal show the same subtlety.”
I felt that this would also make a very striking cover design for the book and would lend itself well to leather onlays and embroidery. I therefore set about working on a sample board to test out this concept. I photocopied the pattern of the cabinet, sizing it down so the grid was an appropriate size for one of my sample boards (which measure 78mm wide by 124mm tall).
I had some wonderful burnt orange coloured pig skin in stock that was a great match for the cabinet colour. I paired this with some dark “Chocolate 32” goatskin from Harmatan, which was a great match for the ebony used on the original cabinet.
With the materials chosen I first created a grid on the pigskin covering leather. The grid wasn’t totally regular, as when studying the original cabinet the marquetry squares actually differed in height and width. I drew the grid onto the reverse of the leather and then embroidered these lines in dark brown thread using a whipped running stitch. Using pared down pieces of the ebony-coloured leather, I cut out onlays and stuck them into the grid squares using PVA glue. I also selected some grey suede which formed half-circles within the grid pattern.
The leather was then extensively embroidered using different coloured polyester threads to build up texture and interest on top of the grid design. My intention for the binding was to have the spine bound in the dark brown goatskin and the boards in the patterned orange pigskin. I felt that this was in keeping with the look of the original cabinet: the contrast of the marquetry alongside the plain ebony trim and cabinet base.
The sample board was therefore made so that one edge was covered in the dark brown leather, onto which I embroidered the name of the book and the hand-written signature of Ernest Gimson which I found within the reference book (see below left image). Small hints of gold were also embroidered where the grid lines crossed, and extra pieces glued onto the leather surface (see below right image).
I wanted the doublures to harmonise with the cover design so chose to also apply grid-embroidery to these too. I wanted to pay homage to Ernest Gimson’s embroidery designs which he created in the 1880s and 1890s. He created deceptively simple designs often with repeating patterns and especially liked to design whitework: white embroidery on a white ground. I therefore chose to use a semi-transparent vellum to create edge-to-edge doublures that were only patterned in shades of white. I took small elements of the cover design and recreated these on the vellum.
The leather was stuck onto the front of the board and turned in around the edges. The centre of the board was infilled and sanded flush so that once the vellum doublure was stuck down it would be completely flat. One extra step I needed to complete before sticking the vellum down though was to paint out the leather turn-ins with white acrylic paint. As the vellum I used was semi transparent, in order for the colour of the pigskin and goatskin not to show through it required this additional step.
This sample board became number seventy one in my ever-growing collection, and I finally added some extra gold detail that wrapped around from the back to the front of the board.
My sample boards generally don’t feature the endpaper designs, unless the endpapers match the doublures I am going to use of course. In the case of this book, with so much inspiration to choose from within the reference book I decided to add a different design element into the binding design here on this occasion.
The endpapers were inspired by the design for pew ends, the drawings of which feature in the text block. Gimson’s style relied on both good-quality materials and good workmanship. All the woodwork was done with hand tools, with the techniques used to create each piece being crucial. Joints and dowels, for example, became part of the design. I therefore experimented with profiling and staggering sheets of paper to show six of the different pew designs and did some small test pieces to test this out.
I selected paper colours to compliment the cover design, whilst also working together to go from light cream through to dark brown. The paper I opted to use was Canson Mi-Teintes 165gsm, I chose this as it was a good weight for cutting profiles into without the fear that they would catch and crease. I tested applying a wash of colour and different mark-making to distinguish the outlines of the pews and in the end opted to embroidered the outlines through the paper so you could see them on both sides whilst flicking through the endpaper stack.
With the design of the endpapers tried and tested in miniature, it was time to make the full-sized versions for the book itself. As I had selected to use four different colours of paper, these needed to be joined together two-to-two at the spine joint. I edge-pared the joining edges and stuck them together with PVA glue. The two bi-folded pieces of paper were then used to create made endpapers with a dark brown goatskin leather joint.
I used large photocopies of the pew profiles to work out the correct stagger required so that slithers of each would still be visible behind the next as I worked my way up the layers. Rather than cutting the front edges to the correct profile at the start, I just cut away the necessary paper that then allowed me to sew the outline detail to each sheet of paper.
I used a needle pricker to mark the outlines and chose a corresponding coloured thread to form a whipped running stitch. Of course I had made things difficult for myself here as the endpapers were double sided so both sides needed to look perfect! I was really careful to use long enough pieces of thread so that I could do a full run of stitches without having to add a new piece of thread half way along a line of stitching. The way I finished each piece of thread was by fraying the short cut ends out and gluing them down to the paper surface. At the end of the process I glued down small gold half-circles on top of these thread ends to conceal them.
You can see more images of the endpapers and the little gold half-circles in the Fine Bindings section of my website here, along with images of the completed book. Part two of this blog post follows this and you can find it here. It covers more of the forwarding on this binding and the creation of the grid design on the covers of the book.