Major Collection of Bookbindings Comes to Smith's Mortimer Rare Book Room

A major collection of 19th-century American decorated bookbindings has been given to Smith College. The extraordinary collection was assembled by Harvey and Myrtle Finison of Northampton over a period of decades, from the 1950s through the 1980s, and was given to the college for use by undergraduates and scholars studying American publishing history and the development of decorative styles.

The collection consists of more than 2,000 highly decorated volumes, mostly novels, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, bound in embossed, colored, stamped and gilt cloth. These bookbindings, which were prized for the dazzling beauty and inventiveness of their designs, now document American publishers' dramatic departure from the more somber and understated style of bookbinding of the earlier 19th century.

Present in the collection are bookbinding designs by some of the most famous commercial artists of the day-including Will Bradley, Sarah Wyman Whitman, Margaret Armstrong, T.M. Cleland and Frederick Goudy-as well as by many obscure and unidentified designers who are known only from a tiny signature in the form of an initial letter or monogram hidden somewhere on the cover design.

Overall, the work of at least 130 American and English designers is represented in the Finison Collection.
Bookbinding historian Sue Allen of New Haven, Conn., has written, "The potential of the collection for Smith students seems very great. This is such a bright, brilliant, altogether attracting period in American book work (1885-1910) when for a short time greatly gifted architects, painters and artists of distinction were pressed into service as cover designers of 'ordinary' trade books. Student research projects and opportunities seem to beckon on specific and broad fronts."

Harvey and Myrtle Finison quietly assembled the collection over the years by painstakingly scouring bookshops and regularly attending local auctions. Even though they were known in Northampton as passionate bibliophiles, many of their friends were unaware of the scope and extent of their book hunting. Harvey died in 1987, and, since then, Myrtle has been caring for and organizing the collection.

The Smith College Library will catalogue the collection and house it in its temperature- and humidity-controlled Mortimer Rare Book Room. An exhibition of high spots from the Finison Collection is planned for next fall. For further information call Martin Antonetti, curator of rare books, at (413) 585-2906.

March 23, 2000