Throughout the 1980s, numerous exceptional pieces related to the Vale Press and Charles Ricketts were offered through antiquarian booksellers Warrack & Perkins. Some of these can no longer be traced. Among these is a copy of the bibliography of the Vale Press, published by Ricketts after the closure of the firm of Hacon & Ricketts.
In Catalogue Forty-Four, Autumn Stock Catalogue (Autumn 1982) a copy of the bibliography from the collection of Harold Wilmerding Bell was described, and priced at £400. Bound in brown levant morocco gilt, by Riviere, it had Bell's arms gilt-stamped on both covers. It contained:
a sheet of india ink and white bodycolour designs by Ricketts for binding ornaments, each annotated by Ricketts and with directions to the cutter. Inscribed on the mount: 'Given me by Charles Ricketts 7 x 28 H W Bell (Designs for binding tools)'
At the time it remained unsold, and was offered again in a later catalogue, Illustrated Books, Prints and Posters 1880-1914, Catalogue 56 (1985) for £375.
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| Sybil Pye, binding for G.D. Hibson, Thirty Bindings (1926) |
Of course, it is not the Bell copy of the bibliography that interests me, but the inserted sheet with designs of some binding tools with comments by Ricketts. The sheet turned up on 21 March 2005 at a Christie's auction in New York (the first part of the Breslauer collection), but by then it was no longer in a copy of the bibliography, but in an edition bound by Sybil Pye: G.D. Hobson's Thirty Bindings, selected from the First Edition Club's seventh exhibition, held at 25 Park Lane, by permission of Sir Philip Sassoon, Bart (London: The First Edition Club, 1926). Bound in 1944, the volume's current location is not given in Marianne Tidcombe's Women Bookbinders.
The sheet with Ricketts's designs is now probably to be found in a private collection.
A little more information can be gleaned from the first catalogue in which Warrack & Perkins offered the sheet of designs. Indeed, Catalogue Forty-Four has a cover on which one of the binding tools is depicted eighteen times, while inside are other tools which we can compare with the tools Pye received from Ricketts (illustrated in Tidcombe's book, p. 207).
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| Warrack & Perkins, Catalogue Forty-Four, Autumn Stock Catalogue (Autumn 1982): cover (detail) |
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| Charles Ricketts, design for a binding tool (from Warrack & Perkins, Catalogue Forty-Four, Autumn Stock Catalogue, Autumn 1982) |
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| Charles Ricketts, design for a binding tool (from Warrack & Perkins, Catalogue Forty-Four, Autumn Stock Catalogue, Autumn 1982, p. 26) |
The design illustrated (twice) on page 26 of the catalogue is listed by Tidcombe as tool no. J2B.
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| Charles Ricketts, design for a binding tool (from Warrack & Perkins, Catalogue Forty-Four, Autumn Stock Catalogue, Autumn 1982, p. 12) |
Another design for a binding tool was illustrated (twice) on page 12 of the Warrack & Perkins catalogue. This one is No. J5A in Tidcombe's Women Bookbinders.
