Rare Books at Heywood Hill are proud to offer this magnificently-crafted facsimile edition, limited to 75 copies, of which 61 copies are for sale, at £4,995. The Repton landscape at Woburn Abbey is gradually being restored and will become one of the best surviving examples of his works when restorations are complete. To mark the bicentenary of the death of innovative landscape designer Humphry Repton (1752-1818), the Duke of Bedford has commissioned a limited edition facsimile of his 1805 Red Book for Woburn Abbey. It has been shortlisted for the British Book Design and Production Awards (BBD&PAs) 2019. Please download a prospectus at the link below:
"I am extremely proud of this unique facsimile, created by the most skilled craftsmen using the finest materials and worthy of the original."
Andrew Russell, 15th Duke of Bedford
"The Improvements ... have nowhere been so fully realised as at Woburn Abbey."
Repton, Fragments, 1816
**Shortlisted for the British Book Design and Production Awards 2019**
Repton presented his proposals as beautiful books, named for the leather in which some were bound. They contained maps, plans, surveys and architectural features alongside explanatory passages outlining his theory of landscape gardening
The famous bindery Shepherds, Sangorski and Sutcliffe have created a book as close as possible to Repton's original for John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford - the grandest Red Book Repton would create in his lifetime.
Repton's 'reveals' - overlays that enabled his clients to visualise his landscape before and after his improvements - have been faithfully reproduced. So have his soft tone watercolours, the signature red straight-grain goatskin - even the folds, creases, and signs of age.
A signed introduction by the current Duke of Bedford and a colophon have been added.
And 'Sissinghurst' (right)
Rudyard Kipling's poem The Glory of the Garden praises the virtues of hard work in cultivating an English garden. This one of only 25 special copies with an additional suite of hand coloured linocuts, signed in pencil by the illustrator Judith Verity. Printed in Andoversford, Glos, by the Whittington Press, 1989. £495 [33269]
Sissinghurst one of 500 copies, signed by Vita Sackville-West, this being copy no. 389. Hand printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their Hogarth Press in 1931. £495 [27236]
"Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made singing: 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade"
Rudyard Kipling
Heather & Robin Tanner, 1981
‘Hors commerce’ copy of the edition limited to 50 stated copies for subscribers. With an original etching on handmade paper signed ‘Robin Tanner’ in pencil. 69 woodland plants and flowers described, each with an accompanying black & white illustration after a print
Uniformly bound in full vellum and presented with a portfolio of 82 loose flower plates
£750 [34970]
