Elkind, Arnold B.

Arnold Elkind graduated from New York University in 1933 and married Mimi Wieder in 1946. He pursued a successful business and legal career inAlbany, New York. Around 1968 the Elkinds began to collect fine books. Arnold Elkind's collecting focused on living printers, hand bookbinders and book designers/artists, particularly those who maintained their own presses; he sometimes helped them financially. In the 1980s he entered into several limited partnerships to produce fine press editions. Among the private press books he collected were examples from the Angelica Press, Kelmscott Press, Rampant Lions Press and the Gehenna Press. Elkind was a particular patron of Barry Moser and his Pennyroyal Press and of artists' books and bindings by English designers Susan Allix and Philip Smith. He died September 18, 1993.

Mimi Wieder Elkind was active in civic and cultural affairs in Albany. Around 1968, in her own words, she became "hooked on books." In addition to sharing her husband's collecting interests, she became deeply interested in twentieth century jeweled bindings, particularly those executed by the English firm of Sangorski and Sutcliffe. In addition to collecting a number of such bindings, she made a census and published an article on this subject in the Book collector (Autumn 1975). Mimi Elkind died in 1994. Both Mimi and Arnold Elkind were members of the Grolier Club, a New York City bibliophile society.

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