Poems by Shelley

Bound by Andrew Sims

Poems by Shelley
George Bell 1902
Limited Edition of 75 copies Printed on Japanese vellum
Illustrated by Robert Anning Bell

Winner ABA Best Historic Binding Award & Fine Cut Award for Gold Finishing, Society of Bookbinders International Competition 2022

Bound in hand-dyed Hewit fair goatskin and elaborately gold tooled to one of the most famous Cobden-Sanderson designs. The work started out as a personal challenge to help develop my finishing skills, in particular the use of gouges.

"Initially a paper pattern closely matching the original had to be drawn up and then adjusted to fit the size of the book chosen. This alone tested my drawing and IT skills to their limits! The pattern was taped to the boards and the skeleton line structure of the design was blind-tooled through the paper using gouges. The albumen glaire was then applied, gold leaf laid on and each board was tooled in a single sitting lasting approx. 6 hours and in total requiring over 2100 individual impressions."

"I chose Hewit fair goat for this project as I find it provides an unrivalled substrate for clear, crisp gold tooling when using the albumen glaire method with genuine gold leaf."

Marbled endpapers, hand-sewn silk endbands, top edge gilt.

Andrew and his work may be found online at: www.andrewsims.co.uk