While on a trip with her family to the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, Miller visited the Roycroft community of craftsmen. This trip inspired her to experiment with making her own hand-bound books. In 1903, she was introduced to suffragette and bookbinder Euphemia Bakewell, and studied with her in Pittsburgh for two years. On a trip to Europe with her parents in 1905, Miller Hunt visited T. J. Cobden-Sanderson's Doves Bindery, and was also able to purchase supplies for her own bookbinding work, such as hand-marbled endpapers, stamping tools, and a stock of gold leaf.[1][2]
Back in the United States, Miller established her own bindery, which she named the Lehcar Bindery ("Rachel" spelled backwards), in Shadyside. There, she produced over 126 complete bindings, performing all aspects of the work except for edge gilding. She worked on numerous commissions and exhibited in several national book exhibitions, and in 1907, she joined the recently-founded Guild of Book Workers of New York. Her work was praised by binder Alfred de Sauty for its "finely balanced sense of craftsmanship."[2] In 1908, she met T. J. Cobden-Sanderson while he was visiting Euphemia Bakewell; Cobden-Sanderson invited her to visit him in Hammersmith, which she did, staying at the Doves Bindery for almost a year.[3]
An example of Hunt's work - a binding created in 1916 for an edition of Samuel Rogers's Poems
She continued creating and exhibiting bindings until about 1920. Her last public showing of her work was at the Guild of Bookworkers' annual exhibition in 1921, held at the Grolier Club. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Hunt became a distinguished speaker on books and bookbinding, though she was no longer an active practitioner. She continued to maintain her binding equipment in a workshop at "Elmhurst," the Pittsburgh home she and her husband moved to in 1926, and continued to refer to it as the "Lehcar Bindery."[1]
Book collector
One of Hunt's treasured books as a child was How to Know the Wild Flowers, by Mrs. William Starr Dana, a gift from a friend of her mother. At fifteen, she was given a copy of Leonard Meager's The English Gardener by a family member, which inspired in her a lifelong interest for book collecting, particularly books about botany and plants.[1] She attended her first book sale in 1911, at the age of 29, where she purchased two botanical works, one of which was a copy of Jardin d'Hyver ou Cabinet des Fleurs, a gardening work by Jean Franeau, sieur de Lestocquoy.[1]
After her marriage in 1913, Rachel continued to collect works on botany and gardening, and developed a network of relationships among librarians, gardeners, bibliographers, authors, collectors, and scholars. In 1936, the Hunts began building a library at their home "Elmhurst" to house her growing book collection. Rachel sometimes accompanied her husband Roy on business trips, allowing her to tour gardens in South America, the Caribbean and Europe.[1] As her connections to the botanical and bibliophile communities grew, Rachel hosted intellectual gatherings at her home, in addition to speaking engagements at outside organizations. She was the first woman to lecture at the Grolier Club (at that time still an all-male organization), and was a founding member of the Hroswitha Club. Her collection included over 6,000 bookplates, many of them designed for her by her friend Sarah B. Hill, and in 1922, she was a founding member of the American Bookplates Designers and Collectors Society.[3] She was also an active member of the Garden Club of Allegheny County, the Garden Club of America, the American Horticultural Society, and the Herb Society of America.[1]
Her career as a lecturer continued well into the 1950s. In 1958, the first volume of a catalogue of her book collection was produced by Jane Quinby.[1] In 1960, Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt and Roy Hunt founded the Hunt Botanical Library (known as the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation starting in 1971, as its collection and mission continued to grow).[2][4] Rachel took a very involved role in the planning and design of the library, as well as the moving of her collection into the building.[5]
Personal life
As a child, Rachel "thought it would be great fun to be an acrobat".[2]
She stayed friends with Euphemia Bakewell for many years, as well as other women bookbinders such as Eleanor and Amy Dupuy, Mrs. Elizabeth Utley Thomas, and Sarah Hill, all of whom attended her wedding.[2]
On 11 June 1913, she married Roy Arthur Hunt, a rising executive at Alcoa. Both shared a love for rare books. As an engagement gift for Roy, Rachel bound a prayer-book in "violet crushed morocco, tooled with aluminum leaf."[2] The Book of Common Prayer with which the Hunts' marriage ceremony was performed by Bishop Cortlandt Whitehead was also bound by Rachel, in red and gold.[2] For their honeymoon, the Hunts toured Sweden, Norway, and Russia, where Rachel acquired some gemstones to be used in her bindings.[2] When World War I broke out, the Hunts (then safely back in the United States) worked with Euphemia Bakewell, travelling in Europe, to distribute funding to help orphans and child refugees.[2] In April 1919, their first child, a son, was born, followed by three more brothers over the next seven years.[2]
Hunt died on 22 February 1963, after a prolonged bout of the flu.[5] Roy died three years later on 21 October 1966.[4]
Related Research Articles
Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was an English artist and bookbinder associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.
Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse was a German book-binder, calligrapher and typographer.
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of paper sheets that are folded together into sections called signatures or sometimes left as a stack of individual sheets. Several signatures are then bound together along one edge with a thick needle and sturdy thread. Alternative methods of binding that are cheaper but less permanent include loose-leaf rings, individual screw posts or binding posts, twin loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs. For protection, the bound stack is either wrapped in a flexible cover or attached to stiff boards. Finally, an attractive cover is adhered to the boards, including identifying information and decoration. Book artists or specialists in book decoration can also greatly enhance a book's content by creating book-like objects with artistic merit of exceptional quality.
Daniel Gibson Knowlton was an American classicist bookbinder at Brown University. Knowlton was the nephew of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson and a descendant of Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford.
The Hroswitha Club was a membership-based club of women bibliophiles and collectors based in New York City, active from 1944 to 1999.
Edith Diehl was an American bookbinder and author of Bookbinding, its Background and Technique, a classic text and manual on the history and craft of bookbinding in two volumes. In 1947, in recognition of her accomplishments, Diehl was made an Honorary Life Member of the Guild of Book Workers.
Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff was America's first female bookbinder and printmaker.
Katharine Adams was a British bookbinder famous for her detailed leather bindings.
George Hill Mathewson Lawrence, was a United States botanist, author and Professor of Botany. He helped establish the 'Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium', the Hunt Botanical Library and the Huntia journal. He was also an avid book collector,.
George A. Baer was a German/Swiss/American bookbinder. He specialized in fine leather bindings, including inlays and gold tooling.
August Sandgren was a Danish bookbinder. He was one of the best craftsmen of Denmark and a great designer who never compromised with the techniques of bookbinding.
Sybil Pye was a self-trained British bookbinder famous for her distinctive inlay Art Deco leather bindings. She was, along with Katharine Adams 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.
Sarah Prideaux was a bookbinder, teacher, historian and author of books on binding and illustration. She, along with Katharine Adams and Sybil Pye, was one of the noted women bookbinders of the period.
Annie S. Macdonald (1849-1924) was an artistic bookbinder from Scotland, active in the 1890s and the early 20th century. She was known for her study of old binding techniques, determining how book bindings were created in the medieval era and duplicating the methods used.
The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (HIBD), dedicated as the Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt Botanical Library in 1961, is a research division of Carnegie Mellon University.
Euphemia Bakewell (1870-1921) was an American bookbinder.
Deborah Evetts is a fine bookbinder and book conservator.
Julia Parker Wightman was an American bibliophile and book collector.
Douglas Bennett Cockerell was a British bookbinder and author.
Christine Elizabeth Florence Greenhill was an English bookbinder. She did bookbinding following her encouragement from her sister to enrol on bookbinding classes until the Second World War broke out when she became a full-time air raid warden and thus had little time to do bookbinding. Greenhill returned to bookbinding soon after the war was over and served as honorary secretary of the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders before being elected its president for a single term. The Bodleian Library has held two collections of boxes relating to her life and career in its Libraries Repository since 2009.
1 2 "Hunt Institute". Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
1 2 "Hunt Botanical Library". Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
External links
Johnson, Maryl Catherine. "Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt as a collector and patron of the arts" (), in Journal of William Morris studies (Summer 2004, p. 143-153)
Titcombe, Marianne. The bookbinding career of Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt (pdf)(Pittsburgh: Hunt Botanical Library, 1974)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
