Festival Bindings: 10th – 29th August 2026
Festival Bindings is running concurrently with the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Book Fair from 10th – 29th August 2026. It features new and recent work by Fellows and Licentiates of Designer Bookbinders and most of the bindings are available for sale.
The catalogue below features images and details of all the bindings that are on display and if buyers wish to purchase any of the books we ask that you contact the binder directly. Email addresses for the binders are available by clicking on the “Contact Binder” button below each entry.
The exhibition is taking place at:
National Library of Scotland
George IV Bridge
Edinburgh
EH1 1EW
Book photographs by Chris McNulty (unless otherwise stated)
FOUR QUARTETS
by T.S.Eliot
The Folio Society, 1968
Bound in 2026
Price: £720
Case binding in goatskin with double gate-fold hinged boards. Lettered on spine.
Each panel lettered with the title of one of the four Quartets with decorations by the binder representing the four elements – Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Outer boards have a single recessed circle referencing the ‘still point of the turning world ‘
THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
by John Bunyan
Shakespeare Head Press for the Cresset Press 1928
No.170/195
370 x 270 x 30mm
SOLD
Two volumes bound in matching but dissimilar full calf vellum, decorated with acrylic inks beneath and on the surface of the vellum with gold-tooling and lettering. Rough gilt edges. Japanese Mingei endpapers. Full black buckram, felt lined, drop-back box.
THE HELEN FRAGMENTS
by Homer
Illustrated by Winifred McNeil
Translated by Richard Seibert
Editions Koch, USA 2003
SOLD
A ‘dos rapporte’ binding sewn on dyed vellum tapes. Top edge coloured with acrylic paint and tooled with gold foil. Leather spine coloured with red acrylic paint and sanded. Boards covered in suede distressed with PVA, acrylic paint and tissue paper. The images transferred onto fair goat.
The imagery of the binding is taken from an Attic red-figure cup by the Brygos painter c 490 BCE in the British Museum. “I imagined the figure of the girl being assembled from pottery shards unearthed during an archaeological dig, just as the text is re-assembled from fragments relating to Helen in Homer’s Iliad.”
PROOFS
by John Crombie
Illustrated by John Crombie
Kickshaws Press, France, 1991
Copy no. 64
Price: £2,700
Covered in navy Italian linen, backed with blue mingei paper, machine embroidery and beadwork. Hand-painted doublures.
THE ABSTRACT GARDEN
by Philip Gross
Illustrated by Peter Reddick
The Old Stile Press, 2006
SOLD
All edges gilt. Covered in full toned vellum. Leather onlays tooled in gold, radiating lines using acrylic ink. Dots tooled in gold. Drop-back box lined with green velvet.
The design depicts a circle of flowers radiating from the centre of the book. Each flower head is tooled from a single letter, together spelling ABSTRACT GARDEN.
LAST POEMS
by A.E Housman
Grant Richards, London, 1922
Price: £1,560
Hand-dyed paper boards. Leather spine. Bradel binding. Recessed inlays of hand-dyed calf skin.
THE BIRD CATCHER
by Martin Armstrong (signed copy)
Martin Secker, 1929
Price: £1,560
Bradel binding, white leather spine, hand printed papers. Gold tooling in 24ct gold using hand-shaped finishing tools.
BRITTEN’S ALDEBURGH
by John Craig
Illustrated by John Craig
The Whittington Press, 1997
Price: £4,200
Traditionally bound with laced-on boards, covered in full black goatskin, tooled in gold leaf and blind, with figured vellum and goatskin onlays, suggesting seascape and musical staves.
THE LOCKS OF THE OXFORD CANAL
by John Craig
Illustrated by John Craig
The Whittington Press, 1984
Price: £3,300
Marbled endpapers, gilt edges, hand-sewn headbands, laced on boards. Covered in full Harmatan goatskin. Hand gold-tooling and lettering. Goatskin and vellum onlays. Velvet-lined drop-back box.
The specially marbled paper combines Oxford blue with the dark red of the covering leather. The design depicts lock gates between the banks of the canal, a bridge over the lock and a narrow boat onlaid on the spine.
A DREAM OF WINGS
by Tom D.Crouch
Black Cat Press, Illinois, 1984
SOLD
Miniature binding. Sewn onto coloured concertina stubs, with false spine and weighted brass boards. Full leather with delicate linear embroidery. Doublures made by layering different colour papers, with additional embroidered detail and carbon tooling. Housed in a tulip wood box, held closed with a small red flag. (symbolic of the flag that the Wright brothers hoisted at their camp to signal to the nearby U.S.Lifesaving Station for help in getting the airplane into position for their historic first flight).
The book is the story of the Wright brothers and the cover is decorated with the blueprint of their biplane. The doublures depict the map of their flight from near Kitty Hawk Bay.
THE SONGS AND SONNETS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
by William Shakespeare
Illustrated by Charles Robinson
Duckworth and Co., London circa 1915
Price: £4,500
Full leather stub binding with laced on boards and edge-to-edge leather doublures. Top edge hand-painted to compliment decorations in the book. Covered in leather with leather onlays and embroidery using coloured and metallic threads. Title embroidered down spine. Housed in a cherry wood box.
This book is a renowned illustrated anthology featuring twelve tipped-in colour plates by Charles Robinson. The design of the binding is inspired by one of the detailed watercolour plates. “On a day – alack the day! – Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air.”
REVOLUTION, EVOLUTION
by Mark Cockram, Various and Unknown
Illustrated by Mark Cockram
Studio 5 Book Arts, 2018
Price: £720
A unique artist’s book. A journey through a revolution evolution. “….it does not evolve, but merely undergoes change of form. It does not advance from less to more, because there is no source where it could derive any increment.”
Hand-dyed leather, book cloth binding. Drum-leaf text block with further collage text, hand-printing, photocopies, resist work, stencil work, collage, gathered text from various sources along with modelling clay, canvas and mixed media. Full edge decoration.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
by Oscar Wilde
Charles Carrington, Paris, 1910
Price: £960
Full hand-dyed leather binding. Free hand-tooling in foil on front and back boards and spine. Hand-printed endpapers and doublures with leather joints.
The surface of the binding is abraded to ‘age’ the surface which has been torn and distressed in places, or left twisted and brooding in others, all to create a ‘canvas’. The original artist’s painting becomes lost in a patchwork of colours and low relief sculpture over the image of Dorian Gray who never aged although his picture did. Each immoral act leaving the picture eaten away; a twisted ungodly creature. The foxing of the pages intentionally kept, emphasising the mottled, decayed nature of the work.
FETISH DIPTYCH
by Mark Cockram, Studio 5 Book Arts, 2026
Price: £600
Hinged rembroitage boards with 20mm Bayonet tacks. Bee’s wax and goldleaf.
‘Fetish idols could be thought of as totems or objects believed to be infused with spiritual and/or physical powers, much in the same way as books. Materials and form are countless – figures, effigies or abstract forms – and the potency of the associated powers can be further enhanced with the addition of other materials such as clothes, horns, nails (metal or otherwise), claws, human of animal skin, exotic shells et al.’
365.0
by Mark Cockram
Mark Cockram, Studio 5 Book Arts, 2026
Price: £600
Palimpsest parchment hinged diptych. Hand-pierced rembroitage boards with 20mm Bayonet tacks.
One of an ongoing series of works that explore the book as a fetish idol. The Fetish Book series is inspired by fetish idols from around the world, in particular Africa and The Philippines among many other countries and peoples, not to mention the Surrealists.
JABBERWOCKY
by Lewis Carroll
Illustrated by Alice Smith
Incline Press, 2010
SOLD
Single section stub binding. Goatskin boards, resist-dyed with leather onlays and acrylic highlights. Machine and hand embroidery with silk, polyester and cotton threads and with additional beading on the covers. Multi-coloured thread knotted onto a criss-cross pattern sewn through the spine leather to form the spine and tail of the Jabberwock.
A well-known nonsense poem from Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. It concerns the slaying of a fictional monster with a ‘vorpal sword’ by a young and ‘beamish’ boy. As is so common in literature, the monster must die, not only because it is a menace but also because it symbolises that which is not ‘us’. The additional text is a prequel to Jabberwocky and presents the ‘monster’ from a different perspective.
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN
by Laurence Sterne
9 volumes. Mixed editions; Vols VII, VIII and IX – first editions, Vols III, IV, V, and VI – second editions, Vols I and II – sixth editions
Vols I & II – J.Dodsley, 1767
Vols III & IV – R and J Dodsley, 1761
Vols V & IV – T.Becket and P.A.Dehont, 1767
Vols VII & VIII – T.Becket and P.A.Dehont, 1765
Vol IX – T.Becket and P.A.Dehont, 1767
Price: £51,000
Nine full leather bindings in shades of red, green, beige, and yellow goatskin, with matching leather joints and sewn headbands in blue silk. The sections have been re-sewn but not trimmed, and the edges are decorated with a mottled pattern — dark plum at the head and a lighter, bi-coloured purple at the fore and tail edges. The paper bord-à-bord doublures are light blue and contrast with the lively patterns of the decorated endpaper sections, each following a different colour scheme for every book. The books are housed in a unique enclosure that was specifically developed for this project. Each of the nine slipcases opens at the head and provides access to an inner box containing a book within. The slipcases are mounted on ball bearings and linked horizontally with alternating Tyvek straps, allowing them to shift position. This nonconformist structure invites playful rearrangement and creates an ever-changing array of constellations. The first slipcase presents the title in metallic lemon along the head, tail, and inner margin of the spine. Both the outer slipcases and the inner boxes are covered in blue Tyvek and lined with soft blue fabric. All papers and Tyvek have been hand-decorated and dyed.
The design of the bindings features a free interplay of curves and fine lines tooled in matt silver and metallic foils — the latter matching the respective colour scheme of each book’s decorated endpapers. When placed next to each other, the text on the spines forms a continuous monologue, as the hand-lettered sentences chirp out a phrase from within, in which the narrator addresses the reader directly… “Shall I go on?”
The group rests in a drop-back box that doubles as the project’s trousseau. Alongside the books and their containers, it holds the original tooling master templates used in the execution of the design. The trousseau is covered with fabric hand-dyed to a mottled dark aubergine and lined with soft fabric panels.
LABOTANY
by Danny Flynn
Illustrated by Eri Funazaki
ff (Danny Flynn and Eri Funazaki), London, 2022
Price: £2,400
Text hand-set and illustrations and endpapers letterpress printed from magnesium plates. An alternative structure – stub sewn text block attached to a rounded spine. Full Harmatan goatskin binding, carbon-tooled, back-pared onlays and gold-tooling.
This is the third copy of the artist’s book by ff, a project begun before the Covid pandemic, although the illustrations proved to be uneasily prophetic. The design reflects the title – a coined word combining ‘Lab’ and ‘Botany’, and conveys a sombre atmosphere. Danny’s text came later, once the world started moving again. Despite its apocalyptic overtones, the entire creative process remained botanical.
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Officina Bodoni, Montagnolo,1925
Edition of 225
N.F.S.
Edges gilt on the deckle. Double silk headbands of 33 different colours. Light brown goatskin flyleaves tooled in black. Covered in mid-brown Harmatan goatskin with multi-coloured goatskin onlays. Tooled and lettered in gold leaf and palladium leaf.
The design was based on the text structure of the book which has forty four sonnets, each of forty four verses. The vibrant colours reflect the many flowers Robert Browning picked and gave to her during their courtship and the growing love for her husband.
LOVE POEMS
Selected and introduced by Imtiaz Dharker
Illustrated by Mikki Lee
The Folio Society, 2022
Price: £960
Full leather binding, hand-dyed. Laced-on boards. Hand-sewn silk headbands and hand-dyed leather doublures. Hand-coloured and printed edges and endpapers.
GIFTS OF UNKNOWN THINGS
by Lyall Watson
Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1976
N.F.S.
Full hand-dyed fair calf with hand-tooled line and dots and gilded semi-circle with green tooled outline. Doublures of teal coloured goatskin with hand-tooled multicoloured foil dots. Photographic endpapers, hand-coloured and printed edges, hand-sewn silk headbands.
A wonderful tale, part anthropological study, part marine biology lesson, part magical story, of the author’s shipwrecking on an island in the Indonesian archipelago and of the years spent living amongst the people there : a people who are so much more connected to nature and the rhythms of life than us in the West.
THE HILL
by Max Porter
Wood-engravings by Hilary Paynter
Nomad Letterpress, The Whittington Press, 2023
Price: £3,000
Sewn on linen tapes. Flyleaves and endpapers of Canson Mi Teintes. Leather joints. Hand-sewn silk headbands. Full pale blue goatskin with large onlaid panel of fair goatskin, dyed and printed with an etching. Some foil tooling. Onlaid line of dyed bright green calf round the big onlay. Black calf cut-out lettering. Doublures of lime green goatskin with onlaid lines of grey goatskin. Drop-back box covered with grey Holland linen and lined with grey goat suede.
THE ART OF BINDING BOOKS
by Angela James
Wood- engravings by Anthony Christmas
Fleece Press, 1991
SOLD
Miniature binding. Printed flyleaves and endpapers. Leather joints. Sewn in linen tapes. Silk headbands worked. Covered in calf, airbrushed purple. Back-pared onlays of various calf pieces, either printed, tooled or stencilled, using remnants of previous Angela James bindings. Purple calf doublures. Box with drop-on lid. Base covered with black goatskin and lined with orange suede. Lid covered with red goatskin. Black lettering label blocked in white.
IN PRAISE OF JOHN BASKERVILLE
by F.E. Pardoe
Wood-engravings by Anthony Christmas
The Fleece Press, 1994
SOLD
Miniature binding.
Sections guarded with black paper. Sewn on narrow linen tapes, dyed black, with black linen thread. Printed flyleaves with leather joints. Spine left exposed. Silk headbands worked. Double boards : the first edged with orange calf and the upper boards covered with white goatskin, printed, with onlays of blocked or cut-out Baskerville letters spelling out his name across both boards. Constructed so that the boards meet at the back when fully opened. Black calf doublures.
Matchbox style container covered with black goatskin, edged with orange calf and lined with orange suede. Large B blocked on the top.
ANGELA JAMES
103 NOT OUT
by Brian Webb
Illustrated by David Gentleman
The Fleece Press, 2022
Price: £1,200
A slightly larger than miniature binding. Sewn on linen tapes. Flyleaves designed and printed by binder. Full black goatskin with onlays of hand-dyed calf and white goatskin. Lettered in gold on spine. Doublures of dyed orange goatskin.
Container to look like an envelope, covered in grey Holland linen with lettering label like a postage stamp. Lined with orange suede. Numerous examples of David Gentleman’s 103 stamps designed for Royal Mail.
COUNTRY MATTERS
by Clare Leighton
Illustrated by Clare Leighton
Victor Gollancz, 1937, First Edition
Price: £2,700
Vertically orientated timber strips fixed to clear acrylic boards partially obscure grids of gold dots tooled onto plain black endpapers. Vellum spine turned back on itself to form knuckles along the joints through which are inserted carbon fibre hinging rods. Cut-outs allow for the vellum sewing slips and board attachments which circle the rods and are bracketed with handmade brass washers. All edges of the text block are finished in solid black calligraphic ink. Housed in a drop-back box with vellum label.
Other companion titles from the Gollancz series are available, similarly bound. Contact binder for information.
SEA FLOWERS
by Miranda Kemp
Illustrated by Miranda Kemp, 2025
SOLD
Sea Flowers was created to house a series of etchings of seaweed gathered along the Dorset coast. The etchings, printed on Kozo tissue, are deeply bitten so that each image is visible on both sides of the sheet. Each print is mounted within a paper frame, then joined together in a concertina structure. The sections are hinged with vellum and Perspex, allowing light to pass through and illuminate the translucent prints, echoing the movement and fragility of seaweed in the sea.
A GATHERING OF LEAVES
by Amy Kitcherside (artist book), 2021
SOLD
Hand-dyed goatskin with gold leaf decoration evoking autumn leaves falling and catching the light. Rough edge gilding in matching gold leaf. Hand-dyed silk headbands.
This is an artist book made up of a series of monoprints inspired by local woods, mounted onto stubs and sewn. Endpapers also monoprinted, designed to feel as though you are entering into the woods yourself as you open the book.
THE FIRST WIFE: A VOICE FOR CATHERINE OF ARAGON
by Deirdre Ames Smith
Illustrated by Alan Smith
Incline Press, 2003
Price: £2,400
Full leather binding with leather onlays and leather headbands. Endpapers decorated with a series of hand-drawn (with coloured pencils) pomegranates, by the binder.
The front cover design represents Catherine’s life, seen as a pomegranate, transitioning from flower to fruit. The back cover depicts a pomegranate losing its colour upon being touched by a red bat : the bat being a representation of Cardinal Wolsey.
OF THE WESTERN ISLES
by Gertrude Bone
Illustrated by Stephen Bone
T.N.Foulis, 1925
Price: £1,956
Inspired by the wild colours of the Hebridean seas, this binding uses the blues and greens of Scottish waters to life through hand-painted endpapers, dyed leather spine with matching joints, and silk headbands. The colours continue, layered beneath the semi-translucent parchment. Incised lines on the reverse of the parchment mirror the woodcut illustrations, a visual thread between the cover and the text.
Stub binding. Scottish roe deer parchment over boards and dyed fair goat spine. The parchment was made in Scotland using traditional tanning methods with limestone and bark.
SONG BY BURNS
by Robert Burns
George Robb for Otto Schulze, Edinburgh, 1901
For Sale: £3000
Covering leather of print-assisted hand-dyed goatskin with blind, gold and pigment foil tooling over craquele background. Gauffered head with rough-edge gilding on foredge and tail. Title page, frontispiece and each of the 76 floriated capitals, hand-coloured inside a hand-painted bronze gouache frame.
ROBERT BURNS
by Elbert Hubbard
Illustrated by Samuel Warner
Roycrofters, East Aurora, N.Y., 1900
SOLD
Sewn on recessed hemp cords with laced-on cushioned boards. Covering leather and doublures of hand-dyed goatskin with layers of silk-screened paste resists over craquele background. Rough edge gilding on foredge and tail with gauffered head.
GRIMOIRE
by Robin Robertson
Illustrated by Tim Robertson
Pan Macmillan, 2020
Price: £3,420
Bound in Harmatan goatskin, with back-pared onlays on front cover and doublures.
The design draws inspiration from the evocative illustrator whose imagery feels both haunting and timeless.
THE WINTER’S TALE
by William Shakespeare
Illustrated by Albert Rutherston
Limited Editions club, New York, 1940
Price: £1,950
Bound in goatskin, lightly airbrushed and with raised slits on the front and back boards, with crimson silk in each slit. Gold-tooled frame on each board. Title tooled in gold on spine. Red leather doublures. Lokta flyleaves. Hand-sewn silk headbands. Top edge polished and sprinkled with red ink and gold leaf. Housed in a wooden box, lined with suede. Tooled leather panel on the lid.
CHARMED LIFE
by Diana Wynne-Jones
Illustrated by Alison Bryant
Folio Society, 2023
Price: £2,400
Full leather binding in navy blue and yellow goatskin. Edges coloured yellow. Handmade paper flyleaves dyed with mint green acrylic ink. Hand-sewn silk headbands. Covers and endpapers tooled in gold. Drop-back box covered in brown bookcloth.
Design inspired by the protagonist’s journey of self-discovery. The different leathers represent the contrast between two worlds. Gold detail symbolises the points where these boundaries dissolve, creating pathways between worlds.
DOWN THE RIVER
by H.E.Bates
Illustrated by Agnes Miller Parker
Victor Gollancz, 1937
Price: £1,800
Full leather binding. Design created using scarf joints, onlays and hand-tooling. Hand-sewn silk headbands. Endpapers and doublures drawn using acrylic ink.
The design is a stylised interpretation of the landscape where the rivers run their course.
THE PRETTY WOMEN OF PARIS
Illustrated by Lindsay Brunnock
Hanbury Press/Panopus, 2026
Price: £1,440
Bradel binding with vellum sides and goatskin spine, featuring a blind relief design on the covers with hand-painted gold ink detail. Hand-drawn endpapers in graphite and shell gold, with Japanese Gampi joints and paper doublures. Fitted with a bespoke 9-carat gold clasp.
AN ACROBATIC ALPHABET
Illustrated by Barbara Crow
The Whittington Press, 1986
No.279 of 335
Price: £2,160
3-piece binding with double concertina spine; paste paper covers by binder decorated with inlaid dots. Snakeskin spine. Title on strips of paper wrapped around foredges with moon gold inlays. Pierced leather flyleaves.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
by William Shakespeare
Illustrated by Jack Wolfgang Beck
Graphic Arts Typographers, New York, 1969
Price: £2,400
Piano hinge structure. Vellum dyed with acrylic inks. Handmade and Japanese paper endpapers. Dyed Tyvek doublures.
NOW WESTLIN WINDS
by Robert Burns
Wood-engravings by Thomas Bewick
Incline Press, 2018
SOLD
Stub binding with leather covered boards of hand-dyed goatskin, painted with various dyes and tooled in genuine gold foil and blind. Stub of Canson Ingres paper hand-illustrated by the binder in pencil and gold foil. Paper doublures hand-illustrated and tooled. Stub is unlined to allow book to be opened fully, displaying the foil blocked title and murmuration pattern. When the boards open they meet to create a bird in flight.
BEOWULF
by Kevin Crossley-Holland
Illustrated by Virgil Burnett
The Folio Society, 1973
N.F.S.
Full bound in Harmatan black goatskin with onlays of red and hand-dyed green goatskin. Hand-tooled in 23.5 carat gold leaf. Hand-sewn silk headbands. Edges decorated with acrylic paint beneath scored black foil. Paper doublures and gold-tooled leather joints.
AN IDEA OF GEOMETRY
by Marnie Parsons
Illustrated by Abigail Rorer
Lone Oak Press, Massachusetts, 2017
Price: £ 2,040
Bound with a separate vellum spine incised with a feather design, to which the boards and sections are attached. The leather-edged boards are covered with crumpled and dyed vellum onlaid with white leather bird silhouettes. Crumpled and dyed paper has been used for the endpapers with an incised white paper flyleaf. The doublures are of crumpled and dyed paper with onlaid white paper bird silhouettes.
