Sarah Prideaux's Bookbinding Tools Catalogued at National Art Library

The National Art Library has documented 171 tools utilized for gold tooling, primarily associated with three binders: Sarah Prideaux, Charles Ricketts, and Sybil Pye. Notably, 35 of these tools were signed and donated by Prideaux from 1911 to 1917. Born in London in 1853, she received home education before spending just over a year at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1877, returning home when her father lost his sight. After teaching English until 1888, she pursued a career in bookbinding, claiming to be the first woman to do so professionally and teach it. Despite an unfavorable review in The British Bookmaker in 1891, she ultimately produced over 300 exquisite bindings. From the mid-1890s to 1900, she worked with finisher Lucien Broca without crediting him. In the late 1800s, she created large tools inspired by Turkish and Syrian tile patterns, which were used on bindings like the 1901 Vale Press edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, signed in 1902. This cataloguing initiative allows for online discovery and viewing of the tools in reading rooms, emphasizing their link to the bindings they helped create.