You can judge a book by its cover : a brief survey of materials [Middleton, Bernard C., 1924-]

Bound in yellow goatskin with mauve onlays; mauve goatskin doublures and flyleaves; gold and black tooling on covers and doublures; mauve title label lettered in gold; gilt edges; in a black goatskin drop-spine box lined with black suede.

Bernard Middleton was born in London in 1924. He studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under William Matthews and Peter McLeish from 1938 to 1940. He was apprenticed to the British Museum Bindery from 1940 to 1948 and during his apprenticeship he attended the London College of Printing one day a week from 1940 to 1943, and served in the Royal Navy from 1943 to 1946. He was a Craftsman-Demonstrator at the Royal College of Art from 1949 to 1951 and was manager of Zaehnsdorf Ltd. from 1951 to 1953. In 1953 he became self employed, primarily as a book restorer.  Middleton was a founding member of Designer Bookbinders and served as its president from 1973 to 1975. The Queen bestowed the MBE on him in 1986. His designer bindings, which feature gold tooling, have been exhibited extensively and he has conducted book restoration workshops in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the USA and Venezuela as well as in the United Kingdom. He has written many articles, reviews and introductions to books. His own two books, A History of English Craft Bookbinding Technique (first published on 1963) and The Restoration of Leather Bindings (first published 1972) have come to be the Standards on the subject, attested to by the number of editions each book has gone through. In addition to You Can Judge a Book by Its Cover (1994) he wrote his Recollections in 1995.

BINDING

Bound in yellow goatskin, with mauve onlays, and mauve goatskin doublures and flyleaves. Gold and black tooling on both the cover and doublures. The colors of the cover and onlays are reversed on the doublures. Gilt edges and a mauve title label lettered in gold. The edges on the boards and turn-ins are gold tooled. The drop-back box is covered with black goatskin with black suede lining and a mauve title label on the spine.