The Passionate Pilgrim & the Songs in Shakespeare's Plays

The Passionate Pilgrim & the Songs in Shakespeare's Plays

The Royal School of Art Needlework was founded in 1872 to create employment for women and to restore ornamental needlework to the significant place it once held among the decorative arts. The school did make embroidered bindings, but more frequently created painted vellum bindings. Blank vellum bindings were made by either Zaehnsdorf or Morrell’s trade binderies and were painted by the women workers at the Royal School of Art Needlework to be sold. Often the painted designs were of themes, characters, or scenes not at all related to the book’s text. The woman who painted this illuminated vellum binding is not identified, as was often the case for RSAN bindings. The school produced painted vellum bindings between 1888 and 1898. They are often fragile. This painted vellum binding is reminiscent of eighteenth-century crewelwork: Tudor roses and stylized carnations inhabit raised tree branches; flying (!) and grazing deer are three-dimensional, composed of gold leaf applied over gesso, as is the lettering. A paper ticket is present inside the lower cover: “Royal School of Art Needlework. Exhibition Road, South Kensington.”

Moore, T. Sturge (Editor)

Hacon & Ricketts

1896

London

1896

Royal School of Art Needlework

P

11

Bookbindings