Draft:Jeff Clements (designer)

Bookbinder and designer Jeff Clements

Jeff Clements MBE (1934-2021) was a British designer-bookbinder, graphic designer, artist and educator. He was noted for his innovative bindings, usually of goatskin with inlays, and contributions to the craft of fine bookbinding.

Early life and education

Jeff Clements was born in 1934 in Plymouth, England. He studied at Plymouth College of Art and Design, where he began a lifelong friendship with David McKee, and also the London County Council Central School of Arts & Crafts (now part of Central Saint Martins).

Career

The Gunpowder Plot, published by the Folio Society in 1973

Clements set up his own practice as a designer-bookbinder and graphic designer in 1957, after completing National Service. He was also elected a member of the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders (now Designer Bookbinders) .He wrote a guide entitled Bookbinding, illustrated by fellow Plymouthian Alan Turvey, published by Arco Handbooks in 1963. A revised Dutch-language version, Ambachtelijk Boekbinden, was published by Gaade in 1991.

Clements taught in Plymouth before becoming Director of BA Hons Graphic Design at Newport College of Art from 1964 to 1977. He then joined the Faculty of Art and Design of Bristol Polytechnic, where he was Dean from 1984-1988. This is now part of the University of the West of England.

He served as President of Designer Bookbinders from 1981 to 1983. Clements retired from being a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders in 2021, after producing more than 160 fine bindings. He exhibited regularly with Designer Bookbinders, as well as in Europe, America and Japan.

The Folio Society limited edition of Les Misérables, designed by Jeff Clements

In 1988 he moved to the Netherlands and continued to produce bindings there, including a 2009 commission for The Clothworkers' Company . He also produced abstract paintings at the home he shared with Katinka Keus in Amsterdam and at their cottage in Friesland. They married after the death of Clements' first wife, Jennetta (1935-2016).

As well as fine bindings, Clements would take on various book cover design commissions. From 1969 into the 1980s he produced many distinctive designs for the Folio Society, such as The Gunpowder Plot (1973), Lord of the Rings (1977 and 1979) and The Mabinogion (1980).

In later years he designed many of the Folio Society's limited edition leather bindings, such as Ulysses (2004), War and Peace (2006), Decameron (2007), Les Misérables (2008), Aeneid (2010) and The Sound and The Fury (2016).

Taliesin and the Mockers, by Vernon Watkins, bound by Jeff Clements in 2008

His bindings are in private and public collections, including The Keatley Trust and in the Anthony Dowd Collection of Modern Bindings kept at the John Rylands Library.

Clements was one of the winners of the 2004 Koopman Bookbinding Prize. In 2007, Clements was made an MBE and an honorary fellow of the international Meister der Einbandkunst society.

A 1991 painting by Clements for Designer Bookbinders is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In 2016, Clements was diagnosed with lung cancer and was accepted onto a Yervoy trial by the Dutch health service. He made a full recovery, his death being due to heart failure.