Elizabeth Greenhill; Telegraph obit (bookbinder)
Hyfler/Rosner
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 23/01/2007 Telegraph
Elizabeth Greenhill, who has died aged 99, was a
leading designer bookbinder; during a career which began in
the 1920s she worked with Walter de la Mare and Hilaire
Belloc and was one of a team of experts sent to help with
the restoration of priceless collections of books after the
Arno flooded Florence in 1966.
Christine Elizabeth Florence Greenhill was born into a
wealthy family on May 4 1907 during a visit by her parents
to Paris. She was educated at Bedales School, Hampshire, at
a finishing school in Florence and at the Convents of the
Sacred Heart at Roehampton and in Brussels. After leaving
school, she did nothing very much until her elder sister
Mina, an artist, encouraged her to enrol for bookbinding
classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs pour Dames in
Paris. There she received highly disciplined training, not
least in the difficult techniques of gold-tooling. She took
readily to the work, and discovered a serious purpose in
life.
In 1927, back in London, she enrolled at the Central
School of Arts and Crafts to study drawing, design and
calligraphy, and bookbinding under Douglas Cockerell and
William Matthews. She set up a small bindery in the attic of
her uncle's house in Doughty Street, Bloomsbury, where she
undertook repair work and run-of-the-mill binding, but also
some important commissions. These included the Gloucester
Civic Bible which was produced to commemorate the Silver
Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary in 1935 - a volume
was also bound for Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians. Walter
de la Mare and Hilaire Belloc were among her early
customers.
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After the Second World War, in which she had served as
an air raid warden, Elizabeth Greenhill set up a bindery at
the family home in South Kensington. There was a steady flow
of books from the Pall Mall antiquarian booksellers William
H Robinson, who had acquired much of the vast collection
formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps during the first half of the
19th century. Work also came in from other dealers and from
the Inns of Court, and books were bound for presentation to
members of the Royal Family. A notable commission was for
the binding of the Nurses' Roll of Honour, 1939-1945, which
is now in Westminster Abbey.
Until the late 1950s Elizabeth Greenhill's decorated
bindings had been designed by her sister, Mina, but she
discovered that her own talent in this medium was greater
than her sister's. She soon began to emerge as a notable
figure in the creative side of the craft and exhibited with
the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders. Two years after her
election to the Guild, the three most important British
collectors of bindings, Major JR Abbey, Albert Ehrman and
Henry Davis, all bought one of her bindings at an exhibition
in Foyles Art Gallery.
Elizabeth Greenhill had two primary styles of design.
One has cumulus cloud-like onlays of pastel-coloured
leathers, with short horizontal gold-tooled lines on them
and in the empty areas. Her other principal style involved
the use of very large lettering, the sole or dominant
feature on the covers. This was not blocked but was
gold-tooled using small tools - a very difficult and
intricate technique. Examples of her work are to be found in
many major libraries, and most are illustrated in her book
Elizabeth Greenhill, Bookbinder, published by KD Duval in
1986.
During the time she spent in Florence after the
devastating floods of 1966, she worked in a large, desolate
hall in the Forte di Belvedere, surrounded by thousands of
damaged old books. It was perishingly cold, but the fur coat
in which she worked seemed to help.
A tall, handsome and vivacious woman with wide
cultural interests, Elizabeth Greenhill had a tendency to
make requests in a manner which left little room for
refusal, but affection for her was such that no offence was
taken.
In 1961 she was the first woman to be elected to
membership of the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders (now
Designer Bookbinders). She served as honorary secretary for
six years, and in 1965 was elected president for a two-year
term. Always anxious to encourage others, she funded a prize
for excellence in gold tooling in the annual Bookbinding
Competition, sponsored by Designer Bookbinders and the Folio
Society.
Elizabeth Greenhill died on December 30. She never
married.