[Private Press] [Kelmscott Press] Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century

Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, December 15, 1897 (but issued on January 6, 1898). First edition, one of 225 unnumbered copies on Perch paper (from a total of 233). 4to. Edited by Sydney C. Cockerell. Text printed in black and in red in Golden type. Illustrated with 35 woodcuts and initials. Publisher's quarter holland cloth over blue paper-covered boards, lettered on front board, wear along spine, boards unevenly toned, lightly spotted; all edges untrimmed; book-plate of Mary S. Collins on front paste-down, library book-plate below same; small ink stamp in lower title-page verso; scattered light spotting to text. Peterson A49; Ransom, p. 331 48

At William Morris's request, starting in October 1892, Sydney C. Cockerell spent several years studying and cataloguing Morris's extensive collection of medieval manuscripts and incunabula, from which Morris planned to issue a heavily illustrated catalogue of his library. Following Morris's death in October 1896, the project was abandoned. Rather than print the work elsewhere, Cockerell "decided to combine the illustrations of woodcuts that had already been prepared...with portions of an article by Morris, 'On the Artistic Qualities of the Woodcut Books of Ulm and Augsburg in the Fifteenth Century.' ...The book sold briskly before publication. 'There has been a great rush on the German woodcuts & they were all sold out last week,' Cockerell wrote to Leighton on 30 November 1897.'...A good many people have been left out in the cold, as orders keep coming in! I suppose it is the announcement that the Press is closing that has made people so eager'" (Peterson)

This lot is located in Philadelphia.

From the Special Collections and Rare Book Collection at University of the Arts’ Libraries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

[Private Press] [Kelmscott Press] Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century