Nolan J. Goodman
Used, rare, and out-of-print books have always been a part of my life. As one of six children, I began working in my father’s bookstore in Stillwater, Minnesota at 12 years old. It was from this singular experience that I learned the trade, as well as developed my passion for researching, cataloguing, and collecting books.
After an initial foray into collecting the early volumes produced at the Roycroft Shop, I realized that the output from the Roycrofters that most captivated me all came from one man: little-known bookbinder Lorenz Schwartz.
My collection of Lorenz Schwartz bindings includes important and relevant examples of his work from throughout his career. The primary goal of the collection is to appropriately place Schwartz within the history of American bookbinding: a master bookbinder whose idiosyncratic, hand-tooled bindings are among the finest ever produced in this country.
The Enemies of Books.
William Blades. London: Trubner & Co., 1880.
Bound by Lorenz Schwartz at The Zahn Bindery, circa 1907. Full black morocco with a matching design on both covers: a large silverfish (“bookworm”) inlaid in white morocco to center of cover, tooled in gilt. (Modeled after a fold-out plate in the book between pp. 62 & 63.) The borders imply the “trail” of a bookworm through the pages of a book, and also include supplementary tooling with flowers, olive branches, and dots in gilt.
The Compleat Angler.
Izaak Walton. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909.
The Riverside Press edition, designed by Bruce Rogers. Bound by Lorenz Schwartz at The Zahn Bindery, circa 1909. Bound in full olive green morocco, ornately gilt-tooled on both covers with a water, fish and lily pad design that follows the outside hinge along the spine. Twin pairs of hand-tooled, scaled fish are enveloped within multiple gilt tooled wavy lines of water and interspersed lily pads, which culminate in a much smaller gilt-tooled fish.