Elizabeth Greenhill was the grande dame of British fine bookbinding. As early as 1928 she exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, bridging the gap between the artistic late Victorian women binders and the designer-binders of today. Midway through her life, from the 1950s to the 1970s, she produced dozens of beautiful bindings. Her sense of colour, her designs — at once bold and feminine, with occasional hints of whimsy — and above all her expert gold-tooling, made her work easily recognisable.

Christine Elizabeth Florence Greenhill was born in Paris in 1907. She inherited a sociable temperament and private means — both her parents came from families of hoteliers, and her paternal grandfather, Karl Grönhold, had considerable financial ability.

He left Saxony about 1860 and moved to London, where he earned enough from hotels in Richmond and the Strand to buy the Albemarle Hotel in Piccadilly, and present it to Elizabeth’s father, Charles, on his marriage in 1898. At the time the Albemarle still held memories of Whistler sketching and Wilde cavorting, but when the coronation of Edward VII was postponed in June 1902 because of his appendicitis, it, like other London hotels, incurred considerable losses. Grönhold died in 1905, and as Charles was not much interested in business, the Albemarle was sold.

During the First World War the family name was changed to Greenhill, in line with many other British families with German surnames. Charles Greenhill liked living on the Continent, and so after the war the family spent long periods in France, Belgium and Italy.

Elizabeth Greenhill spent little time in school: a few years at Bedales, and a few months at finishing school in Italy, and at a convent school in Roehamp-ton. Oswald Powell, father of the eminent bookbinder Roger Powell and himself an amateur binder, introduced her to bookbinding at Bedales.

When she was 18, at the urging of her older sister Mina, a painter, Elizabeth began a two-year course in bookbinding and design at the École des Arts Décoratifs pour Dames in Paris, directed by the designer bookbinder Pierre Legrain.

Returning to London in 1927, she continued her training at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under Douglas Cock-erell and Peter McLeish. For a while she lived at the home of her uncle, John Malcolm Bul-loch, the author and theatre critic, and she set up her presses in his attic. Her enthusiasm for art, music and the theatre also developed during her stay with her uncle.

William Matthews, who gave an evening class at the school, taught her to repair and reback books, and to cut tools, and when she set up a workshop in Essex Street in 1937 he sent trade-bookbinding lads to help her with forwarding and finishing. When war broke out again, Greenhill had little time for bookbinding as she had become a full-time air-raid warden. Nor was she able to do much bookbinding for a few years after the war. In 1944, suffering from ill-health, she went to Norfolk to convalesce, returning to London in 1945.

In later years she did a large amount of plain binding for William Robinson’s of Pall Mall, on books and manuscripts from the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps. Her best-known assistant was the late Peter Waters, head of conservation at the Library of Congress.

She also had a number of pupils who came to her for private lessons, most of whom were, or became, friends. It was Greenhill’s nature to turn work into a social occasion. When she bound a number of books for the 8th Earl Beauchamp at Madresfield Court, she was invited to stay on for weekend house parties.

There were enjoyable luncheons with John Harthan, of the V&A, and she was one of a group of binders who organised and supervised teams of volunteers to work on the Stanhope books at Chevening House.

In 1966, when the River Arno flooded, Greenhill twice went to Florence to help the British team at the Biblioteca Nazionale to rescue books damaged by mud and water. This was a depressing experience, and she had to work in icy conditions with untrained volunteers from many countries.

The Gloucester Civic Bible bound by Greenhill in 1935 was designed by Sebastian Comper. Several other early bindings were designed by her sister Mina, including her first commission from Major J. R. Abbey in 1949. This turned out to be the first of many commissions from important collectors, although subsequent bindings were to her own designs. Her five-volume Doves Bible, for Lord Wardington, was a star attraction at a big exhibition at the V&A in 1972.

In 1961 she was elected the first woman Fellow of the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders, now Designer Bookbinders, and in 1975 she was elected its first woman president. Greenhill served as honorary secretary, helped to plan exhibitions, judged competitions, and awarded a prize for gold-tooling. For many years, Fellows’ meetings were held in her drawing room, and she often entertained visiting bookbinders from abroad.

She was made an honorary Fellow of Designer Bookbinders in 1985, and Duval and Hamilton published a catalogue raisonné of her work, Elizabeth Greenhill Bookbinder, in 1986.

Greenhill did not marry.

Elizabeth Greenhill, bookbinder, was born on May 4, 1907. She died on December 30, 2006, aged 99