Easton Press
Leather bound, gilded edges, moire endpapers, sewn. Known for the 100 Greatest Books Ever Written, the Deluxe Limited Editions and a long running signed first edition programme.
Publishers
The houses we deal in.
The names that come up most often in what we buy and sell. The list is not closed: if a book was made properly, we want it whoever printed it.
The Franklin Library
The book division of the Franklin Mint. Heavily gilt full leather editions: the 100 Greatest Books of All Time, the 25th Anniversary series, the limited editions, and the Signed First Edition Society volumes signed by living authors.
The Folio Society
Slipcased cloth and illustrated editions, with artists and introductions commissioned for each title. Also numbered limited editions in smaller runs.
Limited Editions Club
Founded by George Macy. Limited illustrated editions, many signed by the artist, issued to subscribers with a monthly letter.
Heritage Press
The companion imprint to the Limited Editions Club: the same designs, unlimited and affordable. Often the only way to hold a Macy design.
Nonesuch Press
Meynell, Mendel and Garnett. Typography led editions arguing that fine design did not require a hand press.
Arion Press
Founded by Andrew Hoyem. Letterpress, commissioned artwork and its own typefoundry. Among the most ambitious American books of the period.
Thornwillow Press
Letterpress on dampened paper, hand bound, working with contemporary writers and artists.
Whittington Press
Letterpress from a working printing house, and publisher of Matrix, the journal on type and printing.
Gryphon Editions
Leather bound classics and facsimiles in law, medicine and science, issued in themed libraries.
Suntup Editions
Signed limited editions of modern fiction in lettered, numbered and artist states, with commissioned artwork and bespoke bindings.
Centipede Press
Heavily illustrated limited editions in horror, crime and literary reprints, produced in small runs.
The private presses
Where the modern fine edition comes from.
The revival of fine printing in Britain set the standards the modern houses still work against.
Kelmscott Press
Founded 1891 by William Morris. The press that started the revival, with its own types and dense decorated pages.
Golden Cockerel Press
Founded 1920. Best known for the wood engraved work of the 1920s and 1930s.
Ashendene Press
Founded 1895 by C. H. St John Hornby. One of the three great presses of the movement.
Gregynog Press
Founded 1922 in Powys by Gwendoline and Margaret Davies. Welsh printing and binding of the first rank.
Doves Press
Founded 1900 by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker. Undecorated pages, carried entirely by the type.
Nonesuch Press
Founded 1922. Fine design produced on machine presses, widening who could own a well made book.
Terms
The words in a listing, and what they actually mean.
Trade shorthand is not there to keep you out. It is there because it is precise.
Quire
A gathering of folded sheets, sewn through the fold. The unit a book is built from.
Limitation leaf
The page stating the size of the edition and this copy's number. Often where the signature sits. A book without it has lost its proof.
State
Lettered, numbered and artist copies are three different books at three different prices, from the same press run.
Raised bands
The ridges across a leather spine, made by the cords the gatherings are sewn onto. Real ones are structural; false ones are glued on.
Headcap
The turned leather at the top of the spine. The most commonly damaged part of a fine binding, because people pull books off shelves by it.
Text block
All the pages together, without the covers. If it is loose in the binding, the book needs work.
Price clipped
The corner of a dust jacket cut away to hide the price. It reduces value, so it is always disclosed.
Association copy
A copy owned by or inscribed to someone connected with the book. Usually worth more than a plain signed copy.
Foxing
Brown speckling on paper, from damp or impurities in the sheet. Common, describable, and not the same as mould.
Holding something from one of these houses?
Send us the details. We will tell you what it is, what state it is in and what it is worth.
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New acquisitions, catalogues and fairs, before anyone else sees them.
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