Euphemia Bakewell

Euphemia Bakewell (1870 – 1921) was an American bookbinder.

Biography

She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 30 January 1870 to Benjamin Bakewell (an executive with Bakewell, Pears & Co.) and Ellen Frances Boardman (daughter of Rev. Henry Augustus Boardman).

She studied at the Pittsburgh School of Design, and then under William Merritt Chase on Long Island. While in New York, she met Mary Helen Wingate Lloyd, who remained a lifelong friend. Bakewell spent time in Europe, where she studied painting in Paris at the Académie Julian. In 1902, she studied under T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at his Doves Bindery, and continued her study of bookbinding back in Paris. Upon her return to the United States the following year, she lived with her sister Mary in the Sewickley neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where she established her own bindery. In September 1918, she travelled to France with the YMCA's Educational Department to teach, read to, and give lectures to soldiers. She returned to the United States 1919.

She died of pernicious anemia on 25 December 1921.