Only black-and-white images exist of the first "Great Omar" but a digital colourisation
was created in 2001
One of the most lavishly decorated books the world has seen was despatched from London to New York in April 1912. The jewel-encrusted edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was taken aboard the RMS Titanic and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, exactly 110 years ago.
A replacement was finished at great expense by the late 1930s but it was promptly incinerated by German bombers as the British capital was ravaged during the Blitz.
The young man behind this extravagant presentation of the polymath Khayyám's poetry would soon drown in an English seaside resort.
Would anyone dare to commission a third "Great Omar"?
'The greater the price the more I shall be pleased'
In 1911, Francis Sangorski finished work on a binding he had been labouring over at his Holborn workshop for two years. READ MORE...
