18 February – 3 May 2025
This exhibition explores the work of internationally acclaimed bookbinder Roger Powell who established a bindery at his home in Froxfield, near Petersfield in 1947. Powell devoted five decades to fine bookbinding and made significant contributions to the field of early manuscript conservation and restoration. Perhaps best known for his work on The Book of Kells, Powell's meticulous approach and innovative techniques have had a lasting impact on the preservation of historical books and manuscripts.
A passion for fine bookbinding continues today through the work of members of Designer Bookbinders. The selection of their work on display expresses the highest standards in technical knowledge and individual design.
Roger Powell Family, Bedales and the Early Years
Roger Powell OBE (1896-1990) was born in London, to Winifred Marion Cobb and Oswald Byrom Powell. Through his family, Powell’s upbringing was steeped in the values of the Arts and Crafts movement, a liberal attitude to education and women’s suffrage. Powell attended Bedales School from 1905 until 1915, the progressive school co-founded by his father. These were happy years for Powell and his many interests and activities included captaincy of the cricket and football teams, playing the violin and photography. Powell was also introduced to bookbinding by his father who taught the rudiments of the craft to his pupils at Bedales, although at this time, Powell was more interested in calligraphy than bookbinding.
Straight from school, Powell served in the First World War, initially with the 8th Hampshire Regiment and then as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. On demobilisation and whilst living at Charity Farm, Chiddingly, Sussex, he embarked on a somewhat unsuccessful attempt at poultry farming in partnership with his brother Oliver. During this period, Powell met Rita Glanville Harvey, a horticultural student at Reading University, who used to ride over on her motorbike to help with the orchard.
Powell and Rita married in 1924 and had three children: David (1926-2001) and twins, Jill (1929-2019) and Ann (19292025). By 1930, Powell had grown dissatisfied with farming and he decided to enroll at the Central School of Arts and Crafts to study bookbinding. This was the beginning of a career that occupied him the rest of his life.
Roger Powell Training and the Arts and Crafts Legacy
At the age of 34, Powell enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Founded in 1896 by the London County Council, its first principal was William Lethaby, a prominent architect and advocate of the Arts and Crafts movement. He was influenced by the ideas of William Morris and the importance of creating beautiful, well-made objects that could be used in everyday life. Classes included pottery, taught by Powell's uncle Alfred Hoare Powell and textiles, gilding, calligraphy and bookbinding, taught by Douglas Cockerell.
Cockerell was introduced to bookbinding through his brother, Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, who worked for Morris and the Kelmscott Press. Founded by Morris in 1891, the Press was renowned for beautiful hand-printed books, many of which were bound at the Doves Bindery, established in 1893 by Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson.
Douglas Cockerell was apprenticed to the Doves Bindery from 1893 until 1897. During this time, he worked on the leatherbound copies of The Kelmscott Chaucer.
Under the guidance of Cockerell and other tutors at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, including William Matthews, Powell became part of this legacy. Throughout his career, Powell and those who later worked with him continued to further the idea of achieving a harmony between the structure and function of a book and its design.
Geoffrey
Chaucer Kelmscott Press, 1896
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Broxb. 67.7 front cover & spine
The Kelmscott Chaucer was the last title printed by the Kelmscott Press and took four years to complete. The Press printed 425 copies on handmade paper and 12 on vellum. Approximately 50 copies were bound by Doves Bindery in full alum-tawed pigskin, a reference to a common material for bookbinding used in the Late Middle Ages.
The design of the binding was created by William Morris in consultation with Cobden-Sanderson. Charles Wilkinson did the forwarding and Douglas Cockerell and Charles McLeish carried out the tooling.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Bookbinding Training
During the first half of the 20th century, the training of bookbinders was divided into two highly distinct groups. Trade binders were trained primarily by apprenticeship to large firms, sometimes with additional evening classes.
Non-trade binders were trained primarily in art schools. They usually did both the forwarding and finishing of their books and frequently collaborated with private presses.
This division was evident in the 1930s at the Central School, where Douglas Cockerell’s non-trade class was separated literally by a glass wall from the trade students. Powell was part of the non-trade class, but in the evenings, he would go and watch the trade binders at work.
Art schools were vital in training a significant number of binders. The Central School of Arts and Crafts was the most important. However, the London School of Printing, where Edgar Mansfield taught and the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts were also valuable. An important non-trade course was at the Royal College of Art, where Douglas Cockerell taught from 1935 until Roger Powell succeeded him in 1943. Powell taught here until his retirement in 1956 when Peter Waters took up the position.
William Matthews was also an influential tutor. For nearly 50 years, from the late 1920s, he taught at the Central School and from 1940 at Guildford School of Art. Among his notable pupils were Powell, Peter Waters, Tony Cains and Bernard Middleton. On his retirement in the 1970s, his position at Guildford was taken on by a former pupil, Maureen Duke, who lived and worked in Trotton, West Sussex
Bookbinding Terms
Back: covered back of the book also called the spine.
Bands: cords on which a book is sewn, or the ridges on the spine.
Bench Sewing: Any form of sewing through the fold by hand to attach signatures (folded sheets of paper) to form a text block.
Codex: A book made up of multiple sheets of parchment folded together to form leaves.
Doublure: The inside face of the covers, especially when lined with leather and decorated.
End-papers: The leaves added by the binder at the beginning and end of a book, often marbled paper.
Fillet: Impressed straight lines, or the rotating tool used for producing them.
Finishing: the process of decorating the outside of a book, including the spine, covers and edges.
Forwarding: the process of binding a book up to the point where it is ready to be decorated.
Marbling: The process of colouring the edges and endpapers in a process that creates a marble pattern.
Morocco: Goatskin, originally produced in Morocco, later imitated in sheep and lamb skin.
Panel stamps: Large metal blocks, cut or engraved with a decorative motif, usually stamped on the book cover by means of a press.
Pointille: A series of small hand-tooled dots in gold.
Signatures: Two or more sheets of paper stacked and folded as a group.
Tooling: Decoration of a binding by means of finishing tools, i.e., rolls or stamps. Blind tooling: Tooling without gold.
Gold Tooling: Gold leaf applied by heated tools.
Douglas Cockerell & Son
After Powell completed his studies he decided to set up on his own as a binder in Welwyn Garden City. It was not easy to make a living, although Powell did receive an early notable commission to bind Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Hugh the Drover in 1931-32 for the tenor, Steuart Wilson.
The design is built up from simple lines and dots and lettering forms an important part of the overall design. These are features that recur in Powell’s later designs.
Briefly moving back to Steep, where Powell had lived as a child, he taught at Bedales School and continued to run a small bindery.
During this time, Powell also became a founding member of the Petersfield Arts and Crafts Society, established in 1934, along with the artist Flora Twort, furniture designer Edward Barnsley and calligrapher Graily Hewitt.
By 1935, finding it difficult to make a good income, Powell wrote to his former teacher, Douglas Cockerell for advice. In response, Cockerell invited Powell to join his company Douglas Cockerell & Son, in Letchworth.
Sydney Morris Cockerell, known as Sandy had trained under his father and it was while at the Central School that he became interested in paper marbling. The bindery also employed William Chapman and together they created intricate patterned paper, for which they developed an international reputation.
My time with Douglas Cockerell & Son is something for which I will be forever grateful. ROGER POWELL
Work at Douglas Cockerell & Son was divided between forwarding, binding the book up to the point where it is ready to be decorated, which was undertaken by Douglas Cockerell and finishing, decorating the outside of the book done by Sandy. Powell took over forwarding, though in time he also carried out some of the tooling work mostly done to Douglas Cockerell’s designs. A number of the prayer books bound for Canterbury Cathedral in the 1930s were tooled by Powell.
In 1936, Powell bound a lectern prayer book as a memorial to his grandparents. His grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Edward Powell became the Vicar of Bisham in 1848 and it was here that Powell’s father, Oswald Powell was born, the second youngest of 12 children.
A feature of Cockerell’s design approach was to use the raised bands of the book as a starting point for the design, so it was in harmony with the structure of the book. This influence can be seen in Powell’s design which is divided into squares with the horizontal lines relating to the raised bands.
During the Second World War, Powell kept the workshop going, carrying out the small amount of work available. He also took over from Douglas Cockerell as tutor of bookbinding at the Royal College of Art, which had been evacuated to the Lake District.
In 1947, after Douglas Cockerell’s death two years earlier, Powell and Sandy Cockerell decided to part ways. Sandy moved the workshop to Cambridge, where it continued until 1987. Powell moved back to Hampshire and established a bindery at his home at The Slade in Froxfield.
Prayer book presented to Bisham Church
In memory of Thomas Edward and Emma Powell, by their surviving children and grandchildren. The binding was done by Roger Powell at Letchworth in November 1936. Dedication took place April 1937. Image courtesy of Ann Donnelly and the Powell Family Archive
The Slade Bindery, Froxfield
In 1947, Powell and his family moved from Letchworth and set up home at The Slade, an elegant, detached house in Froxfield, near Petersfield, Hampshire.
As Rita and Powell settled into their life, they enjoyed various local activities. Both sang in the Steep Choir and took part in the Petersfield Musical Festival. Powell played many principal roles in the annual Gilbert and Sullivan productions with the Petersfield Operatic Society where Rita was wardrobe mistress.
Over the years, numerous assistants joined the workshop, many of whom went on to establish leading careers in bookbinding and conservation.
In 1956, Peter Waters, who had been Powell’s pupil at the Royal College of Art, joined the workshop as a partner. Waters had previously studied at Guildford School of Art between 1945 and 1949, where he attended bookbinding classes run by William Matthews. Waters, like Powell, was also interested in calligraphy and studied lettering under Dorothy Mahoney at the Royal College of Art.
In 1951, Waters met Sheila Salt, a fellow student of Mahoney. They married in 1953. Together they moved to Froxfield where they built a home and lived until 1971, when Waters was appointed Chief of Conservation at the Library of Congress, in the United States.
I regard books as three dimensional and articulated objects intended for use.
ROGER POWELL
Powell and Waters shared the belief that the design of a binding and choice of materials should be informed by the structure of a book and serve to support a book as an object to be used.
This harmony of parts traces its thinking back, through Douglas Cockerell to T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement.
This integrity of purpose, combined with a desire to make the book a work of true artistic merit rendered the work carried out at The Slade workshop outstanding in the history of British bookbinding.
After Waters joined the firm and in partnership with Sheila, the designs became more intricate, often including the use of small decorative blocks, the designs for which were drawn by Sheila Waters, then cut in intaglio and used blind, without the use of gold leaf.
In the period 1960 to 1965, the workshop produced an impressive series of bindings. In these designs, the emphasis is placed on straight lines with the increased use of onlays in coloured leather. A magnificent design of this period was for the Cranach Press’s edition of Hamlet, bound in 1963. Here the sombre black morocco is relieved by vertical strips of light blue onlay and a purple onlaid panel at the foot of the cover, with gilt lines forming a central chevron pattern.
This book had been commission by the prominent book collector Major J. R. Abbey, who in 1965 commissioned another impressive binding for King Lear, published by Ganymed Original Editions.
Early Printed Books and Manuscripts
The work Cockerell had undertaken on The Kelmscott Chaucer whilst at Doves Bindery in the late 1890s had informed his rebinding of the fourth century Codex Siniaticus for the British Museum in 1935.
This knowledge, in turn, was passed onto Powell when he worked for Cockerell and developed upon during his own career working with early books and manuscripts. Cockerell also passed on the practice of keeping detailed notes on the construction of the book and work carried out.
Powell continued this practice and his meticulous notes offer a fascinating insight into the history of binding and conservation.
early 14th century
On Loan from Winchester College
Powell was entrusted to work on many volumes considered landmarks in the history of the book. These include The Book of Kells, Durrow, Armagh and Dimma, repaired for Trinity College Dublin between 1953 and 1957. Recognition of his work was marked by the award of an honorary Masters in 1961. Powell also rebound the eighth century St. Chad Gospels for Lichfield Cathedral.
Still, Powell and Waters were also aware that rebinding was not always the best course of action for a book. In 1956, they undertook a detailed examination of the late seventh century St Cuthbert Gospel, St Cuthbert Gospel. British Library considered the oldest intact European book. Their findings were later published, in which Powell recognised the importance of retaining the original binding and noted, ‘it is no longer in a state to be treated with anything but informed veneration. Repair is not the answer – unique evidence must not be disturbed.’
The Book of Kells
The Book of Kells, is a ninth century illuminated manuscript that contains the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in Latin. The book is written on vellum in a script known as ‘insular majuscule’ and the manuscript’s importance derives largely from its lavish decoration. It is considered one of the greatest treasures of its kind and is on display in the Old Library, part of Trinity College Dublin. As a young man, Powell collected images of pages from The Book of Kells owing to his interest in calligraphy.
Prior to Powell’s work, the book had been rebound multiple times, often with detrimental consequences. Powell’s approach prioritised the preservation of the manuscript's integrity.
Working with others, including his colleague, Pamela Fowler, they carefully separated the leaves, repaired tears and reinforced weakened areas. Powell rebound the book into four volumes, one for each gospel, to reduce damage to the leaves. The spines were covered in white, alum-tawed leather and he used wooden boards from quarter-cut oak, made by the Edward Barnsley Workshop. Powell chose not to decorate the bindings, feeling it would have been impertinent to compete with the contents, but left the craftsmanship of the oak boards and leather bindings to stand for themselves.
To delineate which one of the four Gospels they are, Powell only added the corresponding number of gold studs on the spine to mark if it was the first, second, third or fourth gospel.
Book Conservation Florence 1966
The news of the flooding of Florence in 1966 dramatically interrupted the busy life at The Slade workshop and the established partnership of Powell and Waters.
The River Arno, overwhelmed by heavy rainfall, breached its retaining wall on 4 November, sending water rushing through the ancient Florentine streets at 37 miles per hour. The flood caused widespread damage and destruction; thousands of businesses were ruined, families were displaced and many lives were lost. At the National Central Library of Florence more than a million books, periodicals, journals and rare books were submerged.
Three weeks later, on Friday, 25 November, Howard Nixon, Head of Rare Book Collections at the British Museum telephoned Waters at The Slade. He requested that Waters and two colleagues immediately fly to Florence to work with the Library’s director Emanuele Casamassima and advise on collection recovery. The next day, Waters, along with Tony Cains and Dorothy Cumpstey, flew to Milan and took a train to Florence. In the following months, they were joined by hundreds of conservators and binders from various countries eager to help. Powell and Rita were also called upon to help, arriving on Sunday, 4 December.
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Fierenze
Image courtesy of Ann Donnelly and the Powell Family Archive
Waters, along with Cains and Cumpstey developed systems for washing, drying, repairing and rebinding thousands of books. The logistics and scale of the task were immense, but an outcome of the disaster was the unprecedented sharing of technical knowledge among book and paper conservators that transformed book conservation. Waters returned home in September 1967 and Cains, with his family, moved to Italy and took over the management of the restoration project for the next three years
It is hard to imagine the world of bookbinding without Roger Powell. NICHOLAS PICKWOAD
Powell continued to take commissions for fine bindings.
In 1979 he bound a majestic copy of The Odyssey, translated by Victor Bérard. This four-volume set is bound in black, grey, mauve and green goatskin and each volume is decorated with different designs. They are housed in a walnut cabinet designed by Edward Barnsley.
However, Powell’s focus of interest and area of work was channelled increasingly into conservation. His established reputation in the field meant he was involved in the growing interest in book conservation, durability of materials and preservation. There were many requests for lectures and he was always happy for students and colleagues to visit the workshop in Froxfield.
Powell’s enduring contribution to the field of bookbinding is his emphasis on an informed knowledge of the many book structures that can be used and how they work. This allows binders to adapt and improvise without impeding the durability or integrity of the binding.
The display of work by current members of Designer Bookbinders showcases the continuation of traditional technical skill with artistic expression and innovation.
Roger Powell in his workshop Photographer: Don Eades.
Image courtesy of Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery
Acknowledgments
Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery would like to thank the generous individuals and organisations who have supported the exhibition. We are extremely grateful to The Wormsley Library, Edward Bayntun-Coward, Edward Thomas Fellowship, The Edward Barnsley Educational Trust, Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts and Winchester College who have kindly agreed to lend to this exhibition. Our special thanks goes to the family of Roger Powell, in particular his late daughter, Ann Donnelly who championed her father’s work and gave access to the family archive.
Exhibition Curator: Louise Weller. Head of Collections and Exhibitions, Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery. 2025