Catalog of the Thirty-Three Designer Bindings of You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover, A. by MIURA, Kirsten Tini; MIDDLETON, Bernard C.; KAVIN, Mel (Compiler)

Pico Rivera, California: Kater-Crafts Bookbinders, 1998. Limited To Six Special Copies This Copy In A Spectacular Designer Binding By Tini Miura [MIURA, Kirsten Tini, Binder]. MIDDLETON, Bernard C. A Catalog of the Thirty-Three Miniature Designer Bindings of You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover. Compiled by Mel Kavin. Kater-Crafts Bookbinders: Pico Rivera, California, 1998. First edition, limited to six copies specially bound, and signed by each of the thirty-three contributing binders, the book designer, the printer, and all people listed in the colophon, this being copy no. 3. Oblong quarto (8 3/8 x 10 3/4 in; 212 x 273 mm). [12], 73, [1, blank], [colophon], [1, blank] pp. Color photo-illustrated throughout. A spectacular designer binding by Tini Miura of full blue crushed morocco with varicolored onlaid morocco "books", tiny green and blue metallic stars, and title and author lettering in gilt ribboned across the upper cover. Custom gold-foil doublures. Custom hand-watercolor endpapers. Hand-painted top-edge. A pristine copy. Housed in the original linen, fleece-lined clamshell case. Kirsten Tini Miura was born in 1940 and in her late teens embarked on the three year course on bookbinding in Kiel and Flensburg, in her native Germany. At the end of her examinations, her bindings were chosen as the best in all of West Germany. Following this she studied with Hugo Peller in Switzerland and at the Royal Bindery in Stockholm. In the mid 1960s, she spent a year working at the famed École Estienne in Paris. After establishing her own bindery in Stockholm, she went to Tokyo, Japan where she established her own bindery and met her future husband, the publisher Einen Miura. She still has a bindery in Tokyo, as well as one in Long Beach, California where she also teaches master classes. "Kirsten Tini Miura is an outstanding example of the accomplished independent craftswoman...The diversity of styles, including Japanese influence, is impressive and demonstrates her respect for each author... A striking feature of many of the bindings is the oleographs that are distinctly her own and very successfully complement her cover designs." (Bernard Middleton, Preface to My World of Bibliophile Binding, 1983) Signed by all of the contributing binders: David H. Barry; Raoul Bollin; James Brockman; Gerard Charriere; Jeff Clements; Paul C. Delrue; Don Etherington; Deborah Evetts; Sun Evrard; Peter Geraty; Louise Genest; Flora Ginn; Donald Glaister; Anne Goy; Angela James; Trevor Jones; Monique Lallier; Bernard C. Middleton; John Mitchell; Tini Miura; J. Franklin Mowery; Joseph Newman; Silvia Nussio-Rennie; Hugo Peller; Heinke Pensky-Adam; Eleanore Edwards Ramsey; Romilly Saumarez Smith; Sally Lou Smith; Jan Bohuslav Sobota; Jarmila Jelena Sobotova; John Tonkin; Geneieve Baroness von Hahn; Michael Wilcox Additionally the book is signed by: Vance Gerry (book designer); Pall Bohne (typographer); Don Nelson (photo layout); Rick Kavin (binding); Bruce Kavin (binding); J. Rae Fox (binding); Marianne Tidcombe (essayist, On Small Books). "How did the thirty-three designer bindings and this catalog come about? In publishing my miniature book, I was working with two internationally known designer binders, Bernard Middleton, who wrote the book and Tini Miura, who designed the binding that was bound by Kater-Crafts Bookbinders. I commissioned each of them to do a designer binding for me before the book was published. The thought occurred to me, if two designer bindings, why not more? I wrote to thirteen other binders to bring the list up to fifteen. Looking at the list of binders in the world I kept expanding until I ended up with thirty-three, an odd number, but I had to stop somewhere. The list starting with binders I knew personally than then to those I knew by reputation." (Mel Kavin, foreword).