Sybil Pye

Sybil Pye (18 November 1879 – 1958) was a self trained British bookbinder famous for her distinctive inlay Art Deco leather bindings. She was, along with Katharine Adams and Sarah Prideaux, one of the most famous women bookbinders of their period. She was the only binder in England and one of a few in the world whose specialty was inlaid leather bindings.

Pye was born Anna Sybella Pye in Marylebone, an area of London, England, one of seven children born to Margaret Thompson and William Arthur Pye.

In 1899 Thomas Sturge Moore was introduced to her family and she developed a close life-long friendship. After Moore introduced her to Charles Ricketts, the artist and book designer, she grew an interest in bookbinding. She taught herself, learning from Douglas Cockerell's classic, Bookbinding and the Care of Books, but also used Moore and Ricketts as advisors and critics throughout her career. By 1906 she had produced her first binding after establishing a workshop in her father's house at Priest Hill in Limpsfield, Surrey. Early bindings were in white or natural pigskin but she increasingly used colored goatskin leather inlays and by 1934 bound a book with 6 different colored inlays.

In 1925 she made a record of the books she had bound and kept it up until 1955. From 1910 to 1946 her work was regularly exhibited in England and around the world. In 1931, the book collector, John Roland Abbey, commissioned her to produce a binding of his own design for Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. In her lifetime, she completed an estimated 164 bindings. Towards the end of her binding career, the quality of her work suffered due to an injury to her wrist that never healed properly. She died in 1958 at the age of 79.

Her nephew, David Pye, was an accomplished wood-turner and carver, theorist of design and handcraft, and Professor of Furniture Design at The Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. He donated her papers to the RCA.