BINDING - Anne Isabella Noel BLUNT (1837-1917) and Wilfrid Scawen BLUNT (1840-1922). The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare, [Newtown], The Gregynog Press, 1930, 4to, VERY FINELY BOUND in morocco by Denise Lubett. NUMBER 94 OF 275 COPIES.

BINDING - Anne Isabella Noel BLUNT, 15th Baroness Wentworth (1837-1917) and Wilfrid Scawen BLUNT (1840-1922).  The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare. Translated from the Original Arabic by Lady Anne Blunt and done into Verse by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. [Newtown:] The Gregynog Press, 1930. 4to (307 x 225mm). Printed on Japanese vellum, half title, title with circular Gregynog device hand-coloured in blue and gold, frontispiece and 13 large initials hand-coloured in gold and colours. VERY FINELY BOUND in later green crushed morocco gilt by Denise Yvonne Lubett with brown and blue morocco onlays forming a tessellated pattern, the larger green flowerheads outlined in gilt, gilt edges, green pastedowns, dark blue endpapers, small binder's label with initials "DYL" on rear pastedown. NUMBER 94 OF 275 COPIES. "Printed by R. A. Maynard at the Gregynog Press, near Newtown in Montgomeryshire, and completed on the 1st. day of July, 1930. The decorations were designed and engraved by the Printer, and were coloured by hand at Gregynog. Compositor: R. O. Jones; Pressman: H. J. Hodgson" (from the colophon). "It is an opulent production, with gold in the printed version of the Gregynog medallion on the title page, and gold in the large initials. These are so nicely coloured that it is hard to tell where printing ends and brushwork starts" (Colin Franklin, The Private Presses). Denise Yvonne Lubett, who created the strikingly modern binding for this copy, was born in 1922 in Paris, from where she fled the war with her family to the United States in 1940. After the war she settled in London and in 1962 enrolled in John Corderoy's bookbinding course at Camberwell. She also received instruction from Sally Lou Smith, William Matthews and Arthur Johnson. In 1966 she set up her own binderies in London and France and in 1971 she was elected a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders. See Dorothy Harrop's article "Craft Bookbinding at Work XIV" in The Book Collector, Spring 1985, pp. 27-40, for a detailed account of her work. Harrop A History of the Gregynog Press 16; De Zilverdistel 16.