If you are looking for an exemplar of the Tomoye Press during its best years, Patience And Her Garden (1910) will serve you well. It was well-made, beautifully illustrated, pleasant if unmemorable content, readable in one sitting, and reasonably priced—in short, the perfect gift. How many copies of Patience were given from mother to daughter, or from a gentleman caller to a young lady he fancied?
The cover and title page show the unmistakable calling card of printer John Henry Nash: the mitred rule. Boxes such as these were difficult to set, but Nash was well-known as a technician. Note how the frontispiece mirrors Nash’s title page with its own quote inside a box.
