- About Bookbinding -
Bookbindings Old and New
Notes of a Book-Lover by Brander Matthews
Book Binders of the Late 1800's part 4
Mr. Cobden-Sanderson is one of the most characteristic personalities in the strange struggle for artistic freedom now going on in England.
He is a friend and fellow-laborer of Mr. William Morris and of Mr. Walter Crane with whose socialistic propaganda he is in sympathy, and with whom he manifests and parades.
He takes much the same view of life that they have; he holds the same creed as to society, and as to each man's duty toward it; he has the same aim in art; and he is gifted with not a little of the same decorative instinct. Believing in handicraft as the salvation of humanity, and that a man should labor with his hands, he abandoned the bar, and studied the trade of the binder. Perhaps it is hardly unfair to call him an amateur - so Mr. Hunt was an amateur when he designed those most beautiful wrought-iron gates at Newport. Mr. Cobden Sanderson's forwarding has not yet attained to the highest professional standard. But there are not lacking book-lovers who believe him to be the most original and the most effective finisher who has yet appeared in England.