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(ESSEX HOUSE: VELLUM PRINTING) CHAUCER, Geoffrey. The Flower and the Leaf.. Edwin Arnold (1902), London, 1902.

Price: US$1950.00 + shipping

Description: Limited to 165 numbered copies on vellum at the Essex House Press under C. R. Ashbee. Small octavo. 45, [1] pp. Hand-colored frontispiece and two full-page hand-colored illustrations and eighty-five hand-colored ornamental letters by Edith Harwood. Tail-piece. Caslon type. Publisher's vellum with rose and gilt lettering to front cover. Bit of natural mottling to vellum. Custom folding cloth chemise and slipcase. A very good copy.Great Poems Series No. 6. "In 1886, C.R. Ashbee established the Guild of Handicraft at Essex House London. Around the same time, Ashbee created the Essex House Press. The Essex House Press published its first book in 1898. The work of the press was very much a part of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Ashbee continually linked the aims of the press with those of John Ruskin and William Morris and described the object of the movement as ?making useful things?making them well and?making them beautiful.? The critics, however, were not so sure about the work of Essex House Press, calling it ?articraftiness.? Later booklovers came to admire much of its work. Some of the presses and some of the workmen for Essex House Press came from the Kelmscott Press after its demise in 1897 following the death of William Morris. Ashbee designed his own typeface called ?Endeavor? for the press. In 1902, the press moved to Glouscestershire. The Essex House Press closed in 1910, having produced more than seventy titles." (Univ. of Utah)

Seller: Nat DesMarais Rare Books, ABAA, Portland, OR, U.S.A.

( ESSEX HOUSE PRESS ). Chaucer, Geoffrey. THE FLOWER AND THE LEAF. Edward Arnold / Sameuel Buckley, London & New York, 1902.

Price: US$2000.00 + shipping

Condition: Near Fine

Description: 12mo, 45 pages, the upper cover blindstamped with a rose motif and the words "Soul is Form", spine lettered in gilt, stiff vellum, Ex libris Arthur E. Chapman. Covers soiled, tissue guards laid in to protect the illustrations. C.R. Ashbee and his Essex House Press inherited the principles and many of the personnel of The Kelmscott Press. Each paragraph begins with an ornamental letter drawn and coloured in by Edith Harwood. [Tomkinson p.73, 29th book of the press; Ransom p. 266]. Copy numberd 125 of only 165 copies printed on vellum. The vellum, paper and inks are the same as used by Morris, and some of the same craftsmen worked for Essex House Press. The 6th book in the Great Poet Series. The Floure and the Leafe is an anonymous Middle English allegorical poem which was mistakenly attributed to Chaucer, but its author - possibly a woman - remains unknown. Frontispiece and 2 woodcut plates, 85 historiated initials

Seller: Thomas J. Joyce And Company, Chicago, IL, U.S.A.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Flower And The Leaf. Essex House Press (Edward Arnold), London, 1902.

Price: US$2100.00 + shipping

Description: 45 pages. 18 x 12 cm. Limited edition, copy 94 of 165 printed on vellum with front cover Arts & Crafts rose in blind, and entitled "Soul Is Form." Hand colored woodcut frontispiece, plus a central two panel plate, and elaborate colored initials throughout by Edith Harwood. Bookplate of Henry Walters Morrieson front cover pastedown. "The Essex House Press was then an Arts & Crafts press par excellence.it reveals more of Art Nouveau in many of the books than one would have expected from so devoted a follower of Morris." CAVE: PRIVATE PRESS, p.125 noting Ashbee's work at Essex House. Slight cover soiling at top edges.

Seller: Royoung Bookseller, Inc. ABAA, Ardsley, NY, U.S.A.

ESSEX HOUSE PRESS: CHAUCER, Geoffrey.. The Flower and the Leaf.. London: Essex House Press, 1902, 1902.

Price: US$2600.34 + shipping

Description: First Essex House Press edition, number 29 of 165 copies only printed on vellum and hand-illuminated. The extensive illustrated initials in this work, alongside the frontispiece and pageant drawing, are all by Edith Harwood (1866-1926), member of the Guild of Handicraft and Women's Guild of Arts. This is the sixth work in the press's Great Poems series. This allegorical poem was credited to Chaucer for most of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Modern scholars have disputed this, with some suggesting a female authorship, and it is now widely described as by an anonymous author. Franklin in his listing for the press credits the work to one Thomas Clanvowe (d.1410), whose father wrote The Book of Cupid, a debate poem influenced by Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls. The Essex House Press was founded by Charles Robert Ashbee and Laurence Hodson following the closure of William Morris's Kelmscott Press in 1897 and "came from the heart of the arts and crafts movement" (Franklin, p. 64). Ashbee bought the Kelmscott Press's Albion printing presses after Morris's death and employed one of the Kelmscott compositors, Thomas Binning. In 1902, "a bindery was established in the Guild, under the direction of Annie Power, who had been a student of Douglas Cockerell" (Crawford, p. 400). Provenance: with the bookplate of George Albert Zabriskie (1868-1954), a life member of the New York Historical Society, inscribed to one Mrs Kennedy on 10 April 1935 on the front pastedown; subsequent bookplate of Robert R. Raymo's Chaucer collection on the front free endpaper. Ashbee, A Bibliography of The Essex House Press, p. 17; Franklin, p. 233; Ransom, Essex House Press 29. Octavo. Original vellum, spine lettered in gilt, rose and "Soul is Form" blind-stamped to front cover. Housed in a custom blue cloth chemise and blue morocco-backed slipcase. Printed in Caslon type. Hand-coloured frontispiece, 2-page drawing of the pageant, and over 80 decorative initials by Edith Harwood. Binding notably square, front cover faintly soiled, ink mark to rear free endpaper recto; a near-fine copy.

Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Flower and the Leaf. Essex House Press, (London, 1902.

Price: US$2875.00 + shipping

Description: Octavo. 45pp. One of 165 copies, printed entirely on vellum. With hand-colored illustrations and initials by Edith Harwood, comprising one full-page and one double-page illustration, and eighty historiated initials. Alan Crawford describes Harwood's work for Essex House Press as harmonious and in keeping with the aesthetic of the time. Her images were "in a simple outline style of the sort found in contemporary children's books, which could be easily and tellingly enriched with colour." He also calls her work on the initials for this particular book one of the two "most successful" of the series. This is the sixth book of the "Great Poems" series from Essex House Press. In full vellum over boards, blind-stamped with the rose logo and the motto of the series, "Soul is Form." Faint soiling, else fine, housed in a stout cloth slipcase. This is the Abbey copy with his bookplate on the front pastedown and accession notes on the rear endleaf. (Crawford, p. 385; Ashbee, pp. 71-2; Tomkinson 29).

Seller: Bromer Booksellers, Inc., ABAA, Boston, MA, U.S.A.