Bound by Rowntree
Jan 21st, 2010 by houghtonmodern
Marianne Tidcombe, in her Women Bookbinders, 1880-1920 (1996), explores in detail how the simultaneous growth of educational opportunities for women and the birth of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England at the end of the 19th century resulted in a dramatic increase in women bookbinders. Houghton’s shelves are already graced with the handiwork of such famous English binders as Katharine Adams, Sarah Prideaux, Jessie King, and the Guild of Women Binders. To those ranks we can now add an exquisite example by Irma T. Rowntree of Lancashire, England.
Irma Thusnelde Rowntree was born in 1870 in Oldham, the daughter of the senior partner of the distinguished law firm of Rowntree and Ritson. As a young woman she earned a reputation as a talented bookplate and book designer and binder and her bindings were exhibited widely in Britain. In fact, her work was so highly valued that it won showings in international exhibitions around the world, from St. Louis (the 1904 World’s Fair) to New Zealand (1906-1907 New Zealand International Exhibition).
Though prized by contemporaries, few examples of her work are recognized today. It is known that she worked in a variety of leathers and her skills included gold-tooling. Houghton’s acquisition is a delicately-painted vellum binding on an 1895 edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (London: George Harrap; printed at the Colonial Press in Boston). The front cover has an outer geometric border and an inner border of (appropriately) Lancashire roses, all executed in rich red and green with gilt accents; the spine and back continue the same motif, with the title in gilt on the spine. Irma has added an additional flourish in the form of similarly-decorated yapp edge covering the fore-edge of the textblock. The binding is signed at the foot of the inner back board with her initials and is dated 1911.
Rowntree seems to have given her art up after her marriage to Ambrose John Wilson in 1914 and genealogical sources list her as dying in Gloucestershire in 1938. We welcome additions to this scant biography and the identification of more of her bindings – they certainly are worth more recognition.
*EC85.B8214S.1895. Purchased with the Stanley Marcus Endowment for Rare Books. Image of Rowntree used with the permission of the Bury Museum and Archives.
This post was kindly contributed by the head of Houghton’s rare book team, Karen Nipps.