Hobson: he inherited his father's insistence on discipline at Sotheby's, both in the book department and in the sale-room

Anthony Hobson: Historian, auctioneer and scholar who followed his father as a leading figure in the study of bookbinding

Bookbinding is an arcane craft that became an art – and the subject of two great historians, Geoffrey Hobson (1882-1949) and his son Anthony, who has just died aged 92. Both found time for it when spared from the business of Sotheby's, the auctioneers.

Geoffrey Hobson was one of the group which bought the firm in 1908. He could not take sales due to deafness, but was a master of every other aspect of the business, most of all the cataloguing of books. Early English and later European gilt bindings became his province, on which he wrote five great books. In 1920 he married Gertrude Adelaide, daughter of Thomas Vaughan, rector of Rhuddlan, a war-widow.

Their only son was born next year at Rhyl, near her parents' home. He grew up in his father's fine London house, 1 Bedford Square – left, sadly, in 1932 when the British Museum commandeered the garden to build the Duveen Gallery. By then he had gone to Sandroyd School, then to Eton as an Oppidan Scholar....Continue Reading

> via The Independent