THE STORY OF ROSALYNDE, Euphues golden Legacie, found after his death in his Cell at Silexedra.

A wonderful hand-painted 'vellucent' binding executed by Jessie M. King for Cedric Chivers. Full vellum with designs in ink and watercolour, highlighted and bordered in gilt. Inner boards ruled and with corner pieces in gilt. Top edge gilt. Illustrated with ten plates by Edmund J. Sullivan. One of 30 copies printed on Japanese vellum, of which 25 are for sale, each numbered and signed by Edmund J. Sullivan to the limitation page. This example is numbered 20. Housed in the original cloth slipcase. A fine copy, the binding square and tight, the vellum with a little natural patina, the artwork fine and without fading. The contents, complete with tissue guards are in fine, clean and bright condition. The slipcase remains structurally sound albeit worn to the upper and lower edges. A magnificent example.

An exquisitely painted and highly detailed design executed by one of the best loved members of 'The Glasgow Girls'. Offered in Chivers' catalogue of 'Books in Beautiful Bindings' (c. 1905) "[with] characteristic design in fine pen work and colour, graceful in line and charming in its arrangement of pattern", for £6 10 shillings. Almost contemporaneous to this work is the binding for 'L'Evangile de L'Enfance', which, when exhibited at the Turin Exhibition of Decorative Art in 1902, received such acclaim as to be awarded a Gold Medal. For a woman to receive this accolade was highly unusual and evidently entirely unexpected, given that the certificate was pre-printed with 'Signor' in the otherwise blank name space later adorned with the name of Jessie King. "Probably the most talented woman designer Chivers employed was the Scottish artist Jessie M. King. Jessie King attended the Glasgow School of Art. In 1899, when she was still really only a pupil, taking her last classes, Francis Henry (Fra) Newbery offered her a teaching post in the School's Department of Book Decoration and Design, under John Macbeth. Although she was not a bookbinder, her work involved demonstrating the art of bookbinding and decoration, and the use of ornament in lettering and illustration, and she designed and bound books as examples for her class. She also produced some pleasant designs for her German clients, the Georg Wertheim Department Store in Berlin, and the publishers, Globus. A little later, she worked on more elaborate designs for Chivers and another firm of binders, MacLehose of Glasgow. About 1904, she produced twenty-five copies of The Story of Rosalynde and seven copies of The High History of the Holy Graal for Chivers" - Todcombe, Marianne: Women Bookbinders 1880-1920 (British Library 1996). A similar example of this binding is illustrated in Colin White's 'The Enchanted World of Jessie M. King' (Canongate, 1989) thus described "The most beautiful, and certainly the most ornate" of her vellucent binding designs.