Sims Reed Ltd. was established in 1978 (then became Sims Reed & Fogg for several years) and has always traded from St James’s, in the heart of London. Its first shop was in Sackville Street then Piccadilly Arcade, later in Jermyn Street and the premises then moved to behind Christies on Duke Street St James’s, under the same roof as Sims Reed Gallery.
From June 2025 we made the decision to operate a private dealership from St James’s Place, two minutes from the former site on Duke Street. From the outset the shop specialised in art books – initially this incorporated art reference books but in the last twenty years the focus has shifted to rare illustrated material, from early printed books, architectural folios, livres d’artistes, bindings, private press, modern artist books and modern art ephemera.
The team working here has always been relatively small. It currently consists of Max Reed (owner), Rupert Halliwell and Juliet Ramsden. On a typical day, Max Reed is most likely to be found thumbing an auction catalogue, Rupert analysing watermarks in a seventeeth-century book of engravings, and Juliet knees deep cataloguing an archive of 20th century design ephemera.
Q&A
AbeBooks: You specialize in rare illustrated books, art, architecture and design. What are your main areas of strengths in this field?
Sims Reed: We have been dealers in material of this nature for nearly 50 years and have therefore accrued a body of knowledge of the books and their market and perhaps more importantly, experience in the handling of them. Even though books are multiples, many details within and of them can vary, and it is in those variations that the interest can be found and the value determined. The variations can include the provenance, binding and even the paper, but also additional added material such as inscriptions, annotations, letters or drawings. For some books the binding can tell you whether the book is a first or second edition or perhaps in some cases even more than that.
AbeBooks: What is the relationship between "art" and "books"?
Sims Reed: Although books can be art in themselves and one of the areas we focus on is ‘the art of the book’, books are also necessarily discreet. A book on the shelf presents only the spine to the outside world and it is only when one opens it that one can discover the worlds that may be contained within.
AbeBooks: What can customers expect when making an appointment to view your books (or when purchasing an item from you)?
Sims Reed: We hope to be able to show them something interesting and / or beautiful that will engage their minds and hearts. Most collectors buy with their hearts more than their heads, often instintively, and we hope to share our own excitement in what we sell with our customers. We hope too to be able to provide full details of the book, its context and history and, in essence, to demonstrate its importance.
AbeBooks: Do you also have inventory for young, aspiring collectors and art lovers, and what’s your advise to them?
Sims Reed: Yes, we do, and we try to buy and sell books that are intrinsically good examples in themselves. Some dealers and collectors like to think in terms of big books and little books (i.e. valuable and less valuable books) we like to think in terms of good books: books that are very good representative examples of themselves. Many of the artist books we stock are not very highly priced but are beautiful and very collectible.
AbeBooks: Are there any “overlooked” book artists today that you would suggest art lovers to check out?
Sims Reed: The German book artist twins Gabriele and Barbara Schmidt-Heins are rather remarkable. They made unique books and were playful but also rigorous in their approach – many of the books exist in editions of very small numbers, so we are always interested when their works become available.
AbeBooks: What was the most remarkable book you handled and why?
Sims Reed: Aah. That is an almost unanswerable question. Or to put it another way, the list is a very long one as there are many and some of them require much explanation. That said: Sir Thomas Lawrence’s copy of William Blake’s ‘Engravings for the Book of Job’ – one of the only copies sold by Blake in his lifetime and to his patron and supporter Lawrence; Thomas Cranmer’s copy of Herodian in an unrestored early 16th-century binding that marked the divorce proceedings between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon; the copy of Jaime Sabartes’ book ‘Dans l’Atelier de Picasso’ given to the publisher, gallerist and accomplished binder, Lucie Weill, by Picasso, with crayon drawings, hand-colouring and illumination throughout by Picasso and bound by Weill herself after another drawing by Picasso; an album of the earliest photographs of Persepolis by Luigi Pesce, given by Pesce to Sir Henry Rawlinson, ambassador to Persia and the decipherer of cuneiform, in a binding of Persian lacquer boards; the illustrated correspondence – covering more than 25 years - of Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones to his daughter Margaret; books by Dürer, Goya, Matisse, Picasso, Moore, Ernst… one could go on but all of these books married stories and people to create something magnificent, an object that embodied and proclaimed it all.
