Sybil Pye (18 November 1879 – 1958) was a self-trained British bookbinder famous for her distinctive inlay Art Deco leather bindings. She was, along with
Katharine Adams
Katharine Adams (25 November 1862 – 15 October 1952) was a British bookbinder famous for her detailed leather bindings.
Biography
Adams was born in Bracknell, a town in Berkshire, England, to Catherine Mary Horton (d. 1912) and Reverend Willi ...
and Sarah Prideaux, one of the most famous women bookbinders of their period. She was the only binder in England and one of a few in the world whose specialty was inlaid leather bindings.
Life
Pye was born Anna Sybella Pye in
Marylebone
Marylebone (usually , also ) is an area in London, England, and is located in the City of Westminster. It is in Central London and part of the West End. Oxford Street forms its southern boundary.
An ancient parish and latterly a metropo ...
, an area of
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
,
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, and a member of a distinguished family. She was one of seven children (four brothers and two sisters) born to Margaret Thompson Thompson Kidston, daughter of James Burns Kidston of Glasgow and William Arthur Pye JP, a successful wine merchant and collector of oriental and contemporary art. They lived in
Limpsfield
Limpsfield is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England, at the foot of the North Downs close to Oxted railway station and the A25 road, A25.Sydney and Margaret Olivier and
Edward
Edward is an English male name. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements '' ēad'' "wealth, fortunate; prosperous" and '' weard'' "guardian, protector”.
History
The name Edward was very popular in Anglo-S ...
and
Constance Garnett
Constance Clara Garnett (; 19 December 1861 – 17 December 1946) was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. She was the first English translator to render numerous volumes of Anton Chekhov's work into English and the ...
and all their children became friends. Their parents entertained many literary and artistic figures of the time including
Laurence Binyon
Robert Laurence Binyon, Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. Born in Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster, England, his parents were Frederick Binyon, ...
and
Thomas Sturge Moore
Thomas Sturge Moore (4 March 1870 – 18 July 1944) was a British poet, author and artist.
Biography
Sturge Moore was born at 3 Wellington Square, Hastings, East Sussex, on 4 March 1870 and educated at Dulwich College, the Croydon School ...
.
The oldest sister was Edith Mary Pye and one of the few women Chevaliers of the Legion of Honour for her work in France during World War I. and the youngest was the artist turned sculptor, Ethel Pye (ca. 1882–1960), who was educated at the
Slade School
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
and worked in bronze and wood. Her brothers included
David Randall Pye
Sir David Randall Pye CB FRS (29 April 1886 – 20 February 1960) was a British mechanical engineer and academic administrator. He served as Provost of University College London from 1942 to 1951.
Biography
Pye was born in Hampstead, London ...
, the scientist and father of the sculptor William Pye, and Edmund Burns Pye (1878–1959), father of David Pye, an accomplished wood-turner and carver, theorist of design and handcraft, and Professor of Furniture Design at The Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. He donated Sybil's papers to the RCA."Royal College of Art, Sybil Pye notebooks (1 box)" /ref>
Sybil was in poor health in her childhood and her first job was as a teacher in a private kindergarten. Ethel and Sybil belonged to a circle of friends of
Rupert Brooke
Rupert Chawner Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915The date of Brooke's death and burial under the Julian calendar that applied in Greece at the time was 10 April. The Julian calendar was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar.) was an En ...
, known as the Neo-pagans, which included the Olivier sisters and
David Garnett
David Garnett (9 March 1892 – 17 February 1981) was an English writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.
Early ...
. When their father died in 1933, the sisters moved to Newick, Sussex, to be close to one of their brothers. Neither of them married and both lived and worked together all their lives, although Moore proposed to her and wrote the poems of ''The Little School'' (1905) for her. She died in 1958 at the age of 79.
Work
She first met Thomas Sturge Moore in 1899 and she developed a close life-long friendship. After Moore introduced her to
Charles Ricketts
Charles de Sousy Ricketts (2 October 1866 – 7 October 1931) was a British artist, illustrator, author and printer, known for his work as a book designer and typographer and for his costume and scenery designs for plays and operas.
Ricketts ...
, the artist and book designer, she developed an interest in bookbinding. She taught herself, learning from Douglas Cockerell's classic ''Bookbinding and the Care of Books'', but also used Moore and Ricketts as advisors and critics throughout her career. By 1906 she had produced her first binding after establishing a workshop in her father's house. Early bindings were in white or natural pigskin but she increasingly used coloured goatskin leather inlays and by 1934 bound a book with six different colored inlays.
In 1925 she made a record of the books she had bound and kept it up until 1955. From 1910 to 1946 her work was regularly exhibited in England and around the world. In 1931, the book collector
John Roland Abbey
Major John Roland Abbey (23 November 1894 – 24 December 1969) was an English book collector and high sheriff.
Early life
He was the eldest of three sons of William Henry Abbey, a brewer, and was named John Rowland before dropping the 'w'. ...
commissioned her to produce a binding of his own design for
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front (World War I), Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World ...
's ''
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
''Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'' is a novel by Siegfried Sassoon, first published in 1930. It is a fictionalised account of Sassoon's own life during and immediately after World War I. Soon after its release, it was heralded as a classic and w ...
''. In her lifetime, she completed an estimated 164 bindings.Tidcombe, ''Women Bookbinders'', pp. 208–214. Towards the end of her binding career, the quality of her work suffered due to an injury to her wrist that never healed properly. Sybil was one of the youngest of the pre-War women binders.
Legacy
Pye's bindings are held by private collectors and collecting institutions alike.
*
Boston Athenaeum
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. It has an area of and a ...
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities University museum, museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard ...