The beautiful, cloth-bound and embroidered limited edition of Beatrix Potter's Complete Tales is a fabulous collector's piece.
The design is inspired by Beatrix Potter's love of textiles and embroidery. Her grandfather had owned a calico printing firm, called the Dinting Vale Printworks, and been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his innovative printing techniques. Beatrix had therefore grown up with an understanding and appreciation of good textile design.
In the early 20th century, when her publisher Frederick Warne & Co., was planning deluxe editions of The Tailor of Gloucester and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, Beatrix insisted that the cloth bindings should be 'distinctly different and pretty'. The unusual flower-printed cloth that was finally used on these books actually came from her grandfather's printing works at her suggestion. The Tailor of Gloucester demonstrates how Beatrix revelled in beautiful textiles; the exquisite paintings in this book of intricately embroidered clothes, copied from eighteenth-century examples in a museum, are amongst her finest work.
