Fairies and Chimneys

London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1919. There are Fairies at the bottom of our garden!
It's not so very, very far away;
You pass the gardener's shed and you just keep straight ahead --
I do so hope they've really come to stay"

PATTINSON, Alice binder. FYLEMAN, Rose. Fairies and Chimneys. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1919.

Fourth edition (first published in May, 1918).

Sixteenmo (6 9/16 x 4 inches; 166 x 102 mm.). 45, [1, imprint] pp.

Bound by Alice Pattinson ca. 1919 in full crushed brown morocco (stamp-signed in gilt "AP" on rear turn-in). Covers with matching designs on front and rear, featuring a geometrical gilt pattern with four groups of twelve leaves inlaid in green morocco with a central inlaid red morocco flower. Front cover decoratively lettered in gilt, spines in with five raised bands, ruled in gilt and decorated with gilt dots, gilt-ruled turn-ins, pinkish cream liners and end-leaves, all edges gilt. Fine.

A very nice example of Alice Pattinson's fine work, one of Douglas Cockerell's students.

A lovely little book containing twenty-five sweet little poems about fairies...

Alice Pattinson was one of a small group of distinguished female binders at work in England at the turn of the century. Among other distinctions, she was chosen (along with Katharine Adams and Florence Paget) as one of the three women employed to bind the forty copies of the Ashendene "Song of Songs" (1902), the illuminated book printed on vellum that stands as one of the greatest achievements of the modern private press movement. "Alice Pattinson (Mrs. Raymund Allen) was also one of Cockerell's pupils, and she set up her bindery in his rooms at 29 Gilbert Street when he moved out to Ewell in 1902. She received a good deal of praise for her bindings, which were illustrated in Art Workers Quarterly, Art Journal, and The Art of the Book (1914). Her work was indeed to a very high standard, but, like Sarah Prideaux, she had professional help. She must have bound a few books under Cockerell, but virtually all her later bindings were forwarded by her partner Else Hoffman, and finished by George Fisher, who at the time was one of the finest finishers in England. Fisher attended Douglas Cockerell's evening classes at the Central School, and Cockerell introduced him to Pattinson just after he had finished his apprenticeship with Rivière's. Pattinson made no secret of employing Fisher, although frequently her bindings were illustrated in catalogues and journals with no mention at all of who did the different parts of the work. Her bindings are signed with the monogram of her initials, similar to that of Annie Power, and are usually dated. Else Hoffman also did some binding on her own account, in a style similar to Pattinson's. She often showed her work at A&CES exhibitions, and also exhibited at Frankfurt in 1906, and at Leipzig in 1914. She lived at ‘Oak House' (later ‘The Cottage'), The Mount, Sydenham." (Marianne Tidcombe. Women Bookbinder 1880-1920, p. 170).

Rose Amy Fyleman (1877-1957) was an English writer and poet, noted for her works on the fairy folk, for children. Her poem There Are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden was set to music by English composer Liza Lehmann. Her Christmas carol Lift Your Hidden Faces, set to a French carol tune, was included in the Anglican hymnal Songs of Praise (1931) as well as in the Hutterian Brotherhood's Songs of Light (1977).

Born in Nottingham, she was the third child of John Feilmann and his wife, Emilie, nee Loewenstein, who were of Russian extraction. Her father was in the lace trade, and the family were Jews who had come from Jever in Oldenburg in Germany in 1860. Her works include: Fairies and Chimneys (1918), The Sunny Book (1918), The Fairy Queen (1919), The Fairy Flute (1921), The Rainbow Cat and Other Stories (1922), The Rose Fyleman Fairy Book (1923), Eight Little Plays for Children (1924), The Adventure Club (1925) and Forty Good Morning Tales (1926).