Each year during the annual Modern Language Association
Convention, the William Morris Society sponsors one or two sessions of papers
and also takes a field trip to a local arts and crafts site. This year I
organized a special session on Pre-Raphaelites in the Pierpont Morgan Library,
so we visited the Morgan for a private exhibition on January 5, 2018. It was
held in the decidedly swanky North Parlor and featured objects mentioned in the
papers given by Meghan Freeman, Heather Bozant-Witcher, and myself.
This photograph shows three long-time members of the Morris
Society in attendance: Mark Samuels Lasner, Florence Boos, and Frank Sharp.
Behind Mr. Samuels Lasner is an early sketch (1860) made by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti of William Morris’s wife Jane. The sketch had been owned by musical
theater composer Jerome Kern and was acquired by the Morgan in 1961. It is
virtually unknown, since it was not mentioned in the 1971 complete catalogue of
Rossetti’s works compiled by Virginia Surtees (who died just this past year at
the age of 100).
 |
| Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Mrs. William Morris." Morgan Library. E.19.6 |
The exhibition was put on display for us by Sheelagh Bevan
of the Department of Printed Books. It also featured caricatures by Ford Madox
Brown and Edward Burne-Jones; autograph manuscripts of Morris’s News from Nowhere and House of the Wolfings; a pencil sketch
and reworked platinotypes of Burne-Jones’ illustrations for the Kelmscott Chaucer; and two copies of the Kelmscott
Chaucer itself, one on paper and one
on vellum.
In a posting to
this blog from July 14, 2017, curator Rowan Bain announced an exhibition of the
artworks of William Morris’s daughter May, which was held at the William Morris
Gallery in Walthamstow, East London from October 2017 through January 2018. Our
own exhibition at the Morgan featured two items by May, one a sketchbook with
two virtually unknown watercolors of Kelmscott Manor, and the other a book
cover which she embroidered. The catalogue of the Walthamstow exhibition
mentioned a transfer design for this cover at the Ashmolean
Museum in Oxford but was unaware of the embroidered
cover itself owned by the Morgan.
 |
| Selwyn Image, design for embroidered book cover, Ashmolean Museum. WA1941.108.29 |
The cover was made in 1891 for the 1890
edition of Charles Kingsley’s The Water
Babies and was designed not by May but by the decorative artist Selwyn
Image (1849-1930). May’s embroidery features gold, blue and dark pink threads
rendering an array of Japanese-looking coiled fish and stylized water symbols.
May probably added the dark pink and green tulips on the spine of the book,
which were not part of the transfer design. The cover was bequeathed to the
Morgan in 1994 by Julia P. Wightman, herself a bookbinder and collector.
 |
| May Morris, embroidered book cover. Morgan Library, PML 150309 |
The exhibition
provided a close look at these fine objects and also served as a cordial
reception before most of the attendants went on to our annual dinner downtown.
Paul Acker, Saint Louis University
No comments:
Post a Comment