Henrietta Wilson Sym of Edinburgh hailed as a prominent bookbinder with the Guild of Women Binders, working closely with the founder of the Guild Frank Karslake. Sym also was a devoted member of the Edinburgh Arts and Crafts Club, along with illustrator, embroiderer, mural decorator, jeweler, and bookbinder Phoebe Anna Traquair, with whom she collaborated to create intricate bindings in the vein of Arts and Crafts Movement principles. Sym’s personal flair in her bindings included gold-tooled and onlaid bindings, a deviation from her contemporaries’ modelled calf techniques.

Phoebe Anna Traquair was a rare gem in the world of bookbinding. While she received no formal training in the art of bookbinding, she partnered with Annie S. MacDonald to persuade Walter B. Blaikie of A. & J. Constable's to allow use of his workshop for the women to tinker and hone their craft. Traquair’s initial illustrations were of fossils created while studying art in Dublin, illustrations which she provided for her future husband, Ramsay Heatley Traquair, a paleontologist. One work of Traquair was featured at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society of 1899. The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was a formal recurring exhibition legendary in the promotion of remarkable work by women binders of the time. Traquair’s designs differ slightly from her cohort Sym; they exhibit little color or gold-tooling, and are characteristically plainer, utilizing undyed modelled goatskin. Her signature mark contains three linked circles, the first circle acknowledging leatherwork, the second circle containing Traquair’s initials, and the third circle delineating the year of the binding. Though Traquair’s bookbinding skills are undeniable, she also showed interest and talent in the illumination of manuscripts (Tidcombe, 1996).

La Vita Nuova of Dante Alighieri was bound with the expertise of Henrietta Wilson Sym, and illustrated with the expertise of Phoebe Anna Traquair.