London born Edgar Mansfield was one of the finest and respected bookbinders of his generation. At the age of four he emmigrated to New Zealand with his family settling in Hawkes Bay. In the early 1930s he studied at King Edward Technical College with William Allen and Robert Field. He spent four years teaching at the Feilding Agricultural School but returned to the United Kingdom in 1934. After World War II he continued bookbinding and design, which he taught at the London College of Printing from 1947 to 1964. Mansfield returned to New Zealand in 1964 settling again in Napier where he turned to sculpture. He was president of Britain Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders from 1955-1968 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1980. Edgar Mansfield died at the age of 89 in 1996.