You can judge a book by its cover : a brief survey of materials [Miura, Kerstin Tini]

Bound in black morocco; spine and covers decorated with gilt, metal foil tooled, and multicolored leather circles; leather doublures with multicolored onlays and tooling; silk headbands; gilt edges; in a marbled-paper chemise and slipcase.

Tini Miura was born in Kiel, Germany in 1940. When she told her father, a teacher of art and art history, that she wanted to be a book illustrator, he advised her first to learn the principles of the bookbinding craft. She studied bookbinding and design three years in Kiel and Flensburg, Germany, followed by a year with Hugo Peller in Switzerland. She worked for Gustaf Hedberg at the Royal Bindery in Stockholm in 1963 and in 1964, and studied with Raymond Mondange at the École Estienne, Paris in 1964 and 1965, and then set up her own bindery in Stockholm in 1966. She met Einen Miura in Stockholm, they were married in London in 1975 and moved to Tokyo in 1976, where she set up her bindery. She has taught bookbinding in Scandinavia, Japan and North and South America, and was a Nixon Scholar at Whittier College in 1983. Her books have been exhibited and are in collections all over the world. She published My World of Bibliophile Binding (Japanese, 1980 and English, 1984), Utsukushi Hon (1983) and A Master’s Bibliophile Bindings (Japanese and English, 1990). She is a co-founder of The American Academy of Bookbinding in Telluride, Colorado and was a faculty member from 1993 to 2003 and has been a professor at Meisei University in Tokyo 1993 to 2002. She currently works out of a studio in Long Beach, CA.

BINDING

Bound in printer’s ink black morocco leather with gilt edges and headbands handsewn in colored silk. The upward movement of the gilt and metal foil tooled figure on the front cover and spine represents the larger than life author. The circles, broken into various shapes and colors, are the jewels of information Bernard Middleton has given to the world of book lovers throughout his professional life. The doublures have multicolored onlays and tooling. The book is protected by a chemise with marbled paper sides and a black leather spine and turned in front strips and a flannel lined slipcase, rounded at top and bottom, covered with marbled paper and the edges of the opening covered in black leather.