BIO
Deborah is an internationally recognised designer bookbinder, trained by several of the greatest exponents of the classical English School of bookbinding. As Drew Heinz Book Conservator at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Deborah cared for a magnificent and varied collection of Coptic manuscripts and bindings, medieval illuminated manuscripts, early printed books, music manuscripts, autograph manuscripts and documents, and children’s books. She combined this work with fine binding, designing, teaching, lecturing, and consulting for major institutions and prominent private collectors. The latter included binding copies of President Kennedy’s note book for Jackie Kennedy Onassis to give to her children, and the rebinding of the 9th Century De re culinaria manuscript of Marcus Apicius for the New York Academy of Medicine.
Prior to this, and while training and then teaching in the British art school system, she found time to exhibit fine bindings, which led to her becoming a fellow of Designer Bookbinders. Moving to America, she equipped and ran a teaching studio in New York and worked for a book conservator part-time, before starting work at the Pierpoint Morgan Library in New York.
Her delight in brilliant leather colours is seen in her fine bindings, where juxtaposed inlays tell a story, or sombre leather backgrounds offset bright onlays. She is best known for her gold-tooled typographic designs of letters in different fonts and size, such as her bindings of Eric Gill’s Four Gospels and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Deborah is now in private practice, and enjoys working for a wide range of clients and institutions. Her work includes fine bindings, pre-publication cover designs for publishers and the conservation of old and rare books.
Deborah advises librarians and collectors on topics including the best restoration and preservation methods, housing and climate control and is entrusted by major libraries and museums with the conservation of their priceless books. She is a lecturer on book conservation, fine binding, decorated papers, etc., to professional organisations, book clubs, publishers and educational institutions.
Atlas of the American Revolution edited by Kenneth Nebenzahl
Rand McNally and Company, 1974
380 x 285 mm
Bound in 1990
Brown and blue inlaid goatskin with red, yellow and black onlays. Gold tooling.
Billy Budd Sailor by Herman Melville
Married Mettle Press, 1987
235 x 184mm
Bound in 1989
Five shades of scarf-joined goatskin, onlaid with yellow and gold tooling.
You Can Judge a Book by Its Cover: A Brief Survey of Materials by Bernard Chester Middleton
Published by Kater-Crafts Bookbinders, 1994
Made for an exhibition celebrating the variety and beauty of the art of book binding in the 20th century with 33 different interpretations of the same book by a group of distinguished and talented bookbinders. Mel Kavin, a publisher and collector with a keen interest in bookbinding, commissioned designer binder and author, Bernard Middleton, to write the text of You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover, with the goal to produce a miniature book.
Sewn on two linen tapes. The endpapers are experimental Zebra marble paper made in the early 1970s. The edges are trimmed and gilt. The two-colour headbands are hand-sewn over a leather/vellum core. The crimson Oasis goat skin case is stamped with a design of curved lines. The lines were then filled with fabric, leather and/or gold tooling. The design is intended to display some different binding materials in an interesting way without cluttering the cover. The use of a lot of gold enlivens the design as light refracts from the surface, and the asymmetric layout produces dynamic spaces for the eye to discover.
“My basic approach is to design a binding which complements the design and literary content of the text block. Sometimes an illustration, or portion thereof, can be adapted for the binding design, not slavishly copied, but transformed by the different materials used to express the same idea. Another time a forceful concept for the text will be the impetus for the design. The limitations imposed by handling and shelving should be respected, and are the reasons I generally use the traditional materials.”
The Tale of the Emperor Coustans and of Over Sea
Kelmscott Press, Hammersmith, 1894
Green goat skin tooled with gold flowers, dots and lettering.
Emperor Coustans makes uses of a printer’s flower from the text to decorate the covers with an all over diaper pattern of alternating flowers and dots. The lettering with dots between each letter runs along the top and bottom edges of the upper cover.
The Four Gospels by Eric Gill
Printed in Waltham St Lawrence by Golden Cockerel Press, 1931
350 x 240 x 45 mm
Bound in 1982
Bound in full black Morocco; top edge gilt and gauffered with fore edge and tail trimmed deckle; décor onlaid with black calf and decorated with gold tooled lettering.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Limited Editions Club, 1980
227 x 180 mm
Bound in 1980
Grey cloth publishers binding stamped in black and ‘silver’.
Title: Milton’s Poems – in 2 volumes: Paradise Lost / Miscellaneous by John Milton
Illustrations by William Blake
Published by the Nonesuch Press, London, 1926
Copy 965 of 1450
256 x 165 x 50 & 47mm
Bound 2010
Private Collection, UK
Both volumes bound in matching but dissimilar full scarf jointed crimson and blue Harmatan goatskin; crimson, blue and grey full-thickness goatskin onlays in recessed panels edged in raw sienna acrylic. Doublures of grey goatskin; flyleaves of crimson suede and grey silk thread paper. Top edges gilt. Gold and blind tooling.
Box of black buckram with felt linings, lettered in gold on grey leather set into the recessed panel.
Upper board of ‘Ourika’ by Claie de Duras
Lewis. Fine Bookbinding in the Twentieth Century, 1984
Bound in 1981
Both volumes bound in matching but dissimilar full scarf jointed crimson and blue Harmatan goatskin; crimson, blue and grey full-thickness goatskin onlays in recessed panels edged in raw sienna acrylic. Doublures of grey goatskin; flyleaves of crimson suede and grey silk thread paper. Top edges gilt. Gold and blind tooling.
Box of black buckram with felt linings, lettered in gold on grey leather set into the recessed panel.
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