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Description
178 pages, 28 leaves of plates : facsimiles (some color). Curated title for Fleet Library Special Collections book cover exhibition Bound to Please, fall 2022. Spine title: History of writing. All color plates are signed: "H.N. Humphreys, Lith. Day & Son Lith.rs to The Queen." Marbled endpapers and pastedowns. Gilt edges. Cover is black papier mache with red backing paper. The design is the same on both covers. Binding design by Henry Noel Humphreys. Library copy is missing spine and is disbound. "The English firm Jackson & Sons held the patent for the papier-mâché bindings of the mid-1840s to 1860s that are associated with Henry Noel Humphreys. Intended to imitate medieval hand-carved bindings and architectural sculpture, so-called papier-mâché bindings were made from a molded mixture of plaster, a filler, and possibly actual papier-mâché and antimony." Unusual cover. Gift of David & Margot Nishimura.
Publication Date
1855
Imprint / Year
London : Day and Son, 1855.
Publisher
Day and Son
City
London
Keywords
Bound to Please Exhibit 2022; Medieval; Egyptian (ancient); hieroglyphics; alphabetic writing systems; writing (processes); writing systems; paleography; cuneiform; Greek alphabet; Chinese scripts; Mexican; illustration (process); illustrations (layout features)
Disciplines
Book and Paper | Illustration
RISD Fleet Library Catalog Record
Recommended Citation
Humphreys, Henry Noel; Collections, Special; and Library, Fleet, "The origin and progress of the art of writing : a connected narrative of the development of the art in its primeval phases in Egypt, China, and Mexico ... and its subsequent progress to the present day / by Henry Noel Humphreys ; illustrated by a number of specimens of the writing of all ages and a series of facsimiles from autograph letters from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century." (1855). Illustration. 48.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_books_illustration/48