THE IDEAL BOOK, OR BOOK BEAUTIFUL, A Tract on Calligraphy, Printing & Illustrations and on the Book Beautiful as a Whole

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 of finding to be the supreme characteristic of the universe itself" (quoted in O'Day Catalogue p.1-2). The praise goes on. . . . Uncommon. This copy with November 1918 gift inscription from Sylvia Loeb to Ruth Eddy. We are uncertain, but the presenter is perhaps Sylvia Loeb Weil who co-authored with Rosetta Goldsmith several children's puzzle books.