Arts & Craft Cloth Book Covers

The use of book cloth, and Victorian machinery, revolutionised book production in the 19th century. From the 1860s onwards these cloth-covered books often featured beautiful Arts and Crafts designs, stamped in gold leaf and colour. Well known designers, including William Morris, Walter Crane and Dante Gabriel Rossetti supplied designs, as did less well known designers including Gleeson White, Laurence Houseman, A A Turbayne and many others.

In this well-researched and well-illustrated talk Barry will show how these publishers’ everyday books made good design available to the many, and not just the few who could afford expensive hand-bound books.

Barry Clark

Barry Clark discovered bookbinding after a career working in the voluntary and public sectors, latterly assisting such bodies with their organisational and management development. As a book collector with a large number of not-so-valuable books in need of repair, he became hooked within a few hours of attending his first book repair and conservation course some ten years ago (at Higham Hall in the Lake District, with SoB members Doug Mitchell and Steve Orriss as tutors). Many workshops later he now undertakes repair work, and creates a range of decorative notebooks for sale at craft fairs. He is currently Chair of the SoB North Wales and North West Region.