Cloth binding for Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’
Charles Brock (1870-1938); unsigned.
1894
Olive cloth, gilt
7 ½ x 4 ¾ inches
This highly detailed design is a gilt version of the illustration appearing on page 40. The effect is spectacular – a luxurious promotion of Swift’s text, and, in its intricate handling, an accomplished example of printing in gilt from an engraved die which was prepared using the original pen and ink drawing. As so often in the development of pictorial covers, the technician who made the binding deserves as much credit as the artist.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke