[Rarebooks] fs: C.R. Ashbee - Rare Silver & Guild of Handicraft

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

 From our Silver Reference Shelves:
<http://www.joslinhall.com/silver.htm>

2 books on C.R. Ashbee...

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Ashbee, C.R. CRAFTSMANSHIP IN COMPETITIVE INDUSTRY. Being a Record of the 
Workshops of the Guild of Handicraft, and some deductions from their 
twenty-one years' experience.

London; Essex House Press: (1908).

One is always left, when discussing Charles Robert Ashbee's writings, with 
the problem of how fully to disclose the fact that, unlike his masterful 
designs in silver, his written work simply is... well... *ahem* ... 
um...  not very good.

Even his wife described him as writing-

           "through cotton wool".

Well... thanks.

This document, however, transcends C.R. Ashbee's stylistic limitations, as 
it is nothing less than his own post-mortem of, and justification for, his 
life's work -The Guild of Handicraft, written at the time that the Guild 
had finally collapsed under a mountain of debts. Here he explains what the 
Guild was trying to do, why they were trying to do it, how they did it, why 
it did not work, and how it could be made to work. Here he attacks his 
critics and declares that the Guild and the Arts and Crafts Movement will 
rise again- he dedicates the book-

            "To those Members of the Guild of Handicraft,
             who, whether working in the Guild's shops or not,
             have decided to stick to it and see it through".

He further shows his determination by placing this quote from Cecil Rhodes 
opposite the Contents page-

             "If you have an Idea, and it is a good Idea,
              and you will only stick to it, you will
              come out all right in the end".

Of course, it did not come out "all right in the end" for the Guild, but 
that is another story... this book remains as Ashbee's rather polemical but 
nonetheless important treatise on his work and the ideals of the Arts and 
Crafts Movement.

Hardcover. 6.5"x10", 258 pages, b/w illustrations; original tan boards and 
cloth spine; covers with some wear and darkening around the edges; top 
corner chipped; endpapers toned, light soil. [03076] $750.00

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Ashbee, C.R. MODERN ENGLISH SILVER WORK: An Essay by C.R. Ashbee, together 
with a series of designs by the author drawn upon a hundred separate 
lithograph plates and coloured by hand, with a descriptive index.

London; B. Weinreb: 1974. 2nd edition.
Limited to 1000 copies.

A facsimile of the limited 1909 edition, with new introductory material on 
Ashbee's life, work and this book, by Alan Crawford and Shirley Bury. When 
Ashbee described the lithographs as "tinted by hand" he meant a bit here 
and there -the pieces are silver so the tints are of the gemstone or enamel 
inlays. This handsome facsimile provides about 200 Ashbee designs for 
silverwork produced or drawn between roughly 1890 and 1909 -Ashbee was 
never much good at keeping exact records.

Added to the designs is Ashbee's own rather polemical introduction, which 
was written at the time that his beloved Guild of Handicraft had finally 
collapsed under a mountain of debts. As Shirley Bury puts it-

           "If few of his pronouncements can be accepted as
            literal truth, it is not because he deliberately set out
            to distort and deceive, but because he always wrote
            to create an effect. In this instance, the Guild was in
            dissolution, and he had both to justify the past and
            proclaim his faith in the future".

Hardcover. 10"x12.5", xxiii + 12 pages plus 100 plates, plus 34 pages; a 
little light wear, but a very nice copy. [030756 $300.00

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Visit our Silver Reference Shelves:
<http://www.joslinhall.com/silver.htm>

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