Francis Bedford

Artist Info

Francis BedfordPaddington, 1799 - 1883, London

LC control no.: nr 00031177

Biography:

Bedford, Francis (1799–1883), bookbinder, was born at Paddington, Middlesex, on 18 June 1799. His father is believed to have been a courier attached to the establishment of George III. At an early age he was sent to a school in Yorkshire, and on his return to London his guardian, Henry Bower, of 38 Great Marlborough Street, apprenticed him in 1817 to a bookbinder named Haigh, in Poland Street, Oxford Street. Only a part of his apprenticeship was served with Haigh, and in 1822 he was transferred to a binder named Finlay, also of Poland Street, with whom his indentures were completed. At the end of his apprenticeship he entered the workshop of one of the best bookbinders of the day, Charles Lewis, of 35 Duke Street, St James's. He was Lewis's foreman for many years and, when Lewis died in 1836, managed the business for Lewis's widow, Maria. It was during this period that Bedford's talent was noticed by the duke of Portland, who became not only a patron but a friend. In 1841 Bedford entered into partnership with John Clarke of 61 Frith Street, Soho, who was known for binding books in tree-marbled calf. Clarke and Bedford carried on their business in Frith Street until 1850, when the partnership was dissolved. In 1851, prompted by ill health, Bedford went to the Cape of Good Hope where he remained for several years, the expenses of his stay being met by the duke of Portland, and on his return to England he established himself in Blue Anchor Yard, York Street, Westminster. He afterwards added 91 York Street to his premises.

Bedford was considered the leading English bookbinder of his time, surpassed only by the best French binders. He was a craftsman rather than a designer and his work, though well executed, is not innovative. The number of volumes bound by him is large, and according to his obituary in The Bookbinder, ‘year after year a constant stream of beautifully bound books went forth from his hands’. Many of his best bindings are imitations of the work of the French bookbinders of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and the bindings of Samuel Rogers's Poems and Italy, of which he bound several copies in morocco inlaid with coloured leathers and covered with delicate gold tooling in the style of Padeloup, are fine examples of his skill.

Bedford himself considered that an edition of Dante, which he bound in brown morocco and tooled with a Grolier pattern, was his chef d'œuvre, and wished it placed in his coffin; but his request was not complied with, and it was sold at the sale of his books for £49. He obtained prize medals at several of the great English and French exhibitions. His books were sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge, in March 1884, and realized £4876 16s. 6d. Many of the best examples of his work were among them.

Bedford was married twice but had no children. He died at his home, 12 Connigham Road, Shepherd's Bush, London, on 12 July 1883. A few months after his death the business was bought from Bedford's nieces by Joseph Shepherd. Shepherd ran the business and continued to use the Bedford name until 1893.

W. Y. Fletcher, rev. Amanda Girling-Budd

Sources The Athenaeum (16 June 1883), 765 · The Bookbinder (1887), 55 · C. Ramsden, London bookbinders, 1780–1840 (1956) · E. Howe and J. Child, The Society of London Bookbinders, 1780–1951 (1952) · H. M. Nixon, Five centuries of English bookbinding (1978) · Boase, Mod. Eng. biog. · Men of the time (1885) · G. Meissner, ed., Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, [new edn, 34 vols.] (Leipzig and Munich, 1983–) · M. Packer, Bookbinders of Victorian London (1991) · J. R. Abbey, English bindings, 1490–1940, in the library of J. R. Abbey, ed. G. D. Hobson (privately printed, London, 1940) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1883)

Wealth at death £5245: administration with will, 12 July 1883, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

W. Y. Fletcher, ‘Bedford, Francis (1799–1883)’, rev. Amanda Girling-Budd, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/1928, accessed 12 Jan 2016]