Zaehnsdorf

active London, 1842-1947

BiographyLC name authority rec, 'n85274074
LC heading: Zaehnsdorf (Firm)

found: Hughes, T. Orts, c1977: colophon (bound by Zaehnsdorf, London)
found: Bookbinding.co.uk Web site, Aug. 31, 2009 (Shepherds, incorporating Zaehnsdorf, est. 1842, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, est. 1901 and Falkiner Fine Papers, est. 1976; "Shepherds is home to two of London's oldest and most prestigious bookbinding companies, Zaehnsdorf (est.1842) and Sangorski & Sutcliffe (est.1901). The binderies were taken over by Shepherds in 1998 and the bindery now trades under the single name of Sangorski & Sutcliffe"; "In 2008 we undertook a major re-organisation of our business that involved some important changes to our premises and a simplification of our trading names. We now trade simply as 'SHEPHERDS' but we continue to use the name Sangorski & Sutcliffe for all our fine binding work"; Shepherds Bookbinders Ltd, Registered in England Wales at 76 Rochester Row, London SW1P 1JU) {http://www.bookbinding.co.uk/index.htm}

Biography:

Zaehnsdorf, Joseph (1814–1886), bookbinder, the son of Gottlieb Zaehnsdorf, a furrier, was born in Pest, Hungary, on 27 February 1814 and educated at the grammar school in that city. He was apprenticed for four years to Kupp, a bookbinder of Stuttgart, where he served a fifth year before working as a journeyman with bookbinders in Vienna, Zürich, Freiburg, Baden-Baden, and Paris. This experience broadened his knowledge of his craft and familiarized him with several languages. He moved to London in 1837 and lodged at 6 Frith Street with his brother Charles, a manufacturing jeweller, and found employment with Westley & Co. of Blackfriars. He was one of the union men who were dismissed in 1839 during the dispute between the employers and the men's trade society. He then worked for John Mackenzie, regarded as one of London's finest bookbinders, until establishing his own firm, probably in 1842 although various dates were given on the firm's later publicity material. The address of this first bindery is unknown; Zaehnsdorf moved frequently during his early years and shared many of his premises with other tradesmen, but always kept within the Covent Garden area of London.

Zaehnsdorf was living at 4 Gough Street when he married Ellen, daughter of William Donovan, a tailor, on 11 January 1845; she died in 1848 and on 10 July 1849 he married Ann, daughter of William Mahoney, an engineer. Their only son, Joseph William, was born on 1 June 1853 at 72 Drury Lane, their then home. Zaehnsdorf took British nationality on 15 September 1855. His financial stability would seem to have been assured by 1858 when he leased 30 Brydges Street from the Bedford estate, adding in 1873 a showroom and residence at 14 York Street. By 1861 he had been appointed ‘bookbinder to the King of Hanover’, and became a member of the Society of Arts. His fine bindings, exhibited at the major international exhibitions, gained him honourable mention at the 1862 London exhibition, and medals at the Anglo-French Working Class Exhibition at Crystal Palace and at Dublin, both in 1865, and at Paris, 1867, Vienna, 1873, and the London Universal Exhibition of 1874 where he set up a bookbinding workshop to demonstrate his craft to the visitor. His bindings were highly esteemed for their artistic taste and for their craftsmanship, and examples are to be found in major libraries and the great English collections.

Zaehnsdorf came into conflict with the unions in 1872 over his employment of numerous low-paid German workmen, and his reaction, which was to place an advertisement in the Clerkenwell News for non-union labour, led nineteen of his men to resign under union instructions. His son, Joseph William, was educated in England, then at St Omer in France before being apprenticed to a bookbinder in Cologne, but this apprenticeship was cut short by the Franco-Prussian War and he returned to Britain in 1870, taking full control of the firm from 1882. After a painful and protracted illness Joseph Zaehnsdorf died at his home, 14 York Street, on 7 November 1886. He was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. On that occasion one of his workmen delivered a eulogy (reported in the British and Colonial Printer and Stationer, 23 December 1886) praising him as:
a businessman of high and unimpeachable character, upright and straightforward in all his transactions, ... strict and particular with regard to our work, but this strictness always tempered by good humour and kind-heartedness and these ... were his shining virtues. His advice, his experience, what is more, his purse, were always ready and open to assist any one of us deserving of it.
The firm of Zaehnsdorf continued to operate from its premises in Bermondsey, south London, until it was merged in 1983 with the rival London binders Sangorski and Sutcliffe, established in 1901 by Francis Sangorski and George Sutcliffe. In this form the new company traded initially as SSZ Ltd and, in the twenty-first century, as Sangorski and Sutcliffe.

Anita McConnell
Sources F. Broomhead, The Zaehnsdorfs (1986) · Journal of the Society of Arts, 35 (1886–7), 38 · m. certs. · d. cert.
Likenesses portrait, repro. in Broomhead, The Zaehnsdorfs
Wealth at death £3893 9s. 10d.: probate, 7 Dec 1886, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
© Oxford University Press 2004–15
All rights reserved: see legal notice Oxford University Press

Anita McConnell, ‘Zaehnsdorf, Joseph (1814–1886)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2010 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/30293, accessed 5 Nov 2015]

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Last Updated8/7/24

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