Discover the amazing history of the book created by a London bookbinding company that sank on the Titanic and burned in the Blitz. More here:
Only black-and-white images exist of the first "Great Omar" but a digital colourisation was created in 2001
In 1911, Francis Sangorski finished work on a binding he had been labouring over at his Holborn workshop for two years.Measuring 16in by 13in , the book was encrusted with 1,050 jewels including specially cut rubies, topazes and emeralds. About 100sq ft of gold leaf and some 5,000 pieces of leather were used in its creation.Sangorski agonised over every detail, at one point borrowing a human skull so he could accurately depict it in his artistic vision.
The pair had met in 1897 at evening classes, where they were taught by the best as apprentices to a line of craftsmen who went back to the Arts and Crafts movement's William Morris and included the eccentric TJ Cobden-Sanderson - a man who ended his career by throwing blocks of his own typeface off Hammersmith Bridge and into the River Thames
After much persuasion, Stonehouse agreed to commission it. He decided against telling his boss Henry Cecil, fearing Cecil would oppose the project."Do it and do it well; there is no limit.
Stonehouse was similarly impressed, describing it as "the finest and most remarkable specimen of binding ever designed, or produced, at any period, or in any country".The philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet lived in what is now Iran, between 1048 and 1131.
Experts on the translated version, Sandra Mason and Bill Martin, consider it to be "one of the best-known individual poems on a worldwide basis"With Henry Cecil by now aware of this incredible creation, and the extraordinary effort behind it, Sotheran's put the book on sale for £1,000 - the equivalent of £120,000 today.
With a lack of interest in Britain, it was decided the Omar should follow him to America, which had a more lucrative book market. "The Sotheran's thing is so fascinating," Mr Maggs says. "The instructions that the guy who commissioned it gave: 'There is no limit' - just like for the Titanic itself there was no limit.The Titanic disaster, in which more than 1,500 people died, is of course one of the most famous events of the 20th Century, yet little is known about what happened to the Omar in its days aboard the ship.
By the time the ship struck the iceberg, the party had broken up. Harry Widener was said to have been in the smoking lounge at the moment of impact.Image caption, "Once exposed inside the ship, if indeed it was exposed, the leather may have been eaten away but of course the precious stones would remain."
"Sotheran's relationship with Sangorski & Sutcliffe was soured over disputes over costs and payments," Mr Saunders says.Francis Sangorski was on holiday with his wife and their four children on the English south coast on 1 July 1912, when he decided to go for a dip in the sea at Selsey Bill in Sussex.
Fore Street was the first road in the City that the German bombers hit. Subsequent air raids in 1940 and 1941 levelled nearly all the buildings in the area. "So like with the Titanic, you think, 'What's the safest way to possibly send this book to America - surely the unsinkable ship is the safest way to send it?' And so this book kind of consciously conspires against you and the more you try, the worse the result."
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