You Can Judge a Book by Its Cover

This exhibition celebrates the variety and beauty of the art of bookbinding with 33 different interpretations of the same book by a group of distinguished and talented bookbinders.

A publisher and collector with a keen interest in bookbinding, Mel Kavin, commissioned designer binder and author Bernard Middleton to write the text of You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover, to produce a miniature book. The first book was designed by Ward Ritchie, with bookbinding designed by Tini & Einen Miura, and printed by Henry Morris.

Kavin went on to commission other world-class binders to design and create a binding of the Middleton text, eventually stopping at 33 books for no good reason “but that I had to stop somewhere.” Together these 33 books highlight a wide spectrum of celebrated 20th-century bookbinding artists and the artistry of the miniature book.