The ideal book, or, book beautiful. A tract on calligraphy, printing & illustration and on the book beautiful as a whole by Cobden-Sanderson, Thomas James - 1972

Berkeley, CA.: Arif Press, 1981.. PROSPECTUS. 18mo. Single Sheet, Very Good with some staining, minor creasing. Letterpress on laid paper. "The Arif Press is pleased to announce as the first in a series of Printer's Chapbooks. Twenty Pages Letterpress. Sewn In Wrappers or Hand Bound In Decorated Boards."

Berkeley, CA: Arif Press, 1981-82.. Prospectus, 6.5" x 4.5", Letterpress On Laid Paper with Deckled Edge, Very Good+. "The Arif Press is pleased to announce as the first in a series of Printer's Chapbooks." This is the Prospectus for a book, not the book itself.

(Pisgah Forest, North Carolina): (Ecusta Paper Corp.), 1950. Reprint. Original Wrappers. Very Good. pp: (ii) Preface, 8, (1), colophon. Bound in white rag wrappers, now tanned at the edges. 9.25" x 6.25". Laid in is a 12.25" x 9" broadside promotion for Ecusta Fine Flax Papers, showing distributors in the US. Reprinted here, using text from the original title-page and colophon.

Berkeley: Arif Press, 1972. Limited edition. Wraps. Near Fine. One of 350 copies sewn in wrappers (of a total edition of 500). Cover drawing by Sarah Zelmanovic. 12mo, pp. unnumbered. Head and heel of spine and corners lightly bumped, light sunning and dustsoiling to wrappers.

San Francisco: John Henry Nash, 1916. Hard Cover. Very Good binding. Quarto. [6], 13, [1], [4] pp. First edition, thus; number 152 of 165 copies. As issued, in buff paper over boards with a printed paper title label on front and rear board; text in black, title and shoulder notes in red. Binding is a trifle soiled including some staining to fore-edge of the front board at the bottom corner; contemporary gift inscription on the first blank; contents are clean. Stunningly reprinted, perhaps no other printer at the time had such a similar aesthetic Cobden-Sanderson's Dove Press--clean and elegant in type and page design. Nash really does capture the spirit of the original. Cobden-Sanderson thought so as well and wrote Nash: "What a perfectly beautiful book you have made of The Book Beautiful! I am enchanted with it! Paper, type, arrangement, all combined under your clever hands to a while which is at once a thing of beauty and a symbol of that great order touched with delight which I am never tired… Read More