V&A postcard

Details

Date: 1897
Dimensions: 33.6 x 23.5
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: lithograph
Catalogue number: BrP289
Designer and maker: Rothenstein, William (1872 - 1945)
Sitter: Ricketts, Charles de Sousy, 1866, 1931
Sitter: Shannon, Charles Hazelwood, 1863, 1937
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Lithograph portrait of artists Charles Ricketts (right) and Charles Shannon (right). The two artists were partners in their artistc career, as well as in their personal life. Together they founded The Dial, a magazine, which had five issues from 1889 to 1897, and the Vale Press, named after their house, The Vale, in Chelsea, London and inspired by William Morris’s The Kelmscott Press.

Details

Date: c.1905-1910
Dimensions: 44.2 x 28.5
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Catalogue number: P563
Designer and maker: Forsyth, Gordon M. (1879 - 1952)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Jan Kinrade, 1998

This print by Gordon M. Forsythe depicts an allegorical female figure holding flaming sword, with figures of Labour and Motherhood and two children carrying olive wreath, a socialist procession winding around a hill in background. Border with foliage pattern and names of English countryside radicals. Quotation from William Morris’s ‘The Day is Coming’ beneath picture.

The print was found by the donor behind a picture frame. Probably dates from 1905-1910, when Forsyth was working as chief designer at Pilkington’s Royal Lancastrian Pottery at Clifton Junction, Manchester.

Details

Date: 1895
Dimensions: 37.5 x 31.75
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: woodcut
Catalogue number: P300a
Credit notes: Presented by J.W. Mackail?

The illustration was originally produced as an etching for the frontispiece to Morris’ “A Dream of John Ball” (Reeves & Turner 1888); the original drawing for this is in the Gallery’s collection, D75. The motto was in lower case roman letter printed by woodcut.
In this version, the enlarged illustration was printed in the Daily Chronicle as one of 24 illustrations by well-known artists of the day, assembled by Joseph Pennell with the object of furthering the cause of the Reform Party at the LCC elections of 1895; the title of the illustration on this occasion was ‘Labour’ and it was purported that it had been drawn especially for the Daily Chronicle. It is probably from the issue of Monday, 18th February 1895.
The illustration was again used in the Kelmscott Press edition of Morris’ book (Sept. 1892), framed in Morris frame with motto in capitals; both were woodcuts. This was also re-used for the leaflet printed in March 1894 for the Ancoats Brotherhood.
For another copy see P300.

Details

Date: June 1890
Dimensions: 25.9 x 19.6
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: P807
Artist: Crane, Walter, 1845, 1915
Owner: Morris | May | 1862 | 1938
Maker: Hooper, William Harcourt (1834 - 1912)

This woodblock printed bookplate, inscribed ‘From the Branch to its Flower’, was designed by Walter Crane and engraved by W.H. Hooper to accompany a wedding gift of books from the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League to May Morris. The gift was accompanied with a message signed by 30 members saying ‘You have lived among us and have worked for us with your best strength’. The bookplate’s design incorporates three ‘caps of liberty’ in each corner.

Details

Date: 10.10.1885
Dimensions: 27.3 x 23.8
Object Type: print
Catalogue number: K2037
Author: Stafford, John Phillip (1851 - 1899)
Maker: W. H.
Sitter: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Effie M Morris, 1954

This cartoon appeared on the front cover of ‘Funny Folk’s on 10 October 1885. It shows a jaunty William Morris having his boots cleaned by a policeman; referring to Morris’s arrest on September 21, 1885 at Thames Magistrates Court for shouting “shame” during a trial. The arrest occurred after Morris protested the sentence of Lewis Lyons, a tailor, who was given two months of hard labor for allegedly resisting arrest at a public protest. Morris was arrested but because of his social position got off lightly in comparison to the sentences and fines imposed on other demonstrators.

Details

Date: 1906
Dimensions: 47.5 x 52.8
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: etching on copper
Catalogue number: BrP109
Artist: Brangwyn, Frank, Sir (1867 - 1956)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Frank Brangwyn made this etching from a drawing he made in Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey) c. 1896. 70 proofs of the etching were made before the plate was destroyed.
A part cut from this plate showing the group of figures around the well was printed in 1919 as a separate etching, ‘The Turkish Well’ (‘Un Puits Turc’) 15 x 21 cm. with the addition of a different background showing houses with arcaded facades.

The view shows Santa Sophia, built in 532-7 during the reign of the Emperor Justinian it was one of the most famous of Byzantine churches; it was turned into a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.

Details

Date: c.1865-68
Dimensions: 10.7 x 15.7
Object Type: print
Technique: wood engraving
Catalogue number: K790
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1956

This is one of a series of illustrations to ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’ for the projected edition of ‘The Earthly Paradise’ begun in September 1865. The illustrations were engraved on wood by Morris and his friends and associates in the Firm. Burne-Jones did illustrations for some of the other tales in ‘The Earthly Paradise’, but the Cupid and Psyche wood engravings were the most completed part of the project which was abandoned in 1868 after trial pages, set in Basle and Caslon types at the Chiswick Press, did not prove satisfactory.

In 1881, a few copies of these sets of illustrations were made, apparently by Morris himself, by friction printing. A second series (numbering about 8 sets according to Sydney Cockerell) was pulled for Morris by Emery Walker at his premises at 16 Cliffords Inn during the Kelmscott Press years; all these were on Kelmscott Press paper. One of these sets, given to Cockerell by Jane Morris c.1898, is bound into a single volume (K775) owned by the William Morris Gallery. Other sets are in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Gift of John M. Crawford) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (J.R. Holliday Bequest 1927).

Drawings related to the Cupid and Psyche illustrations and other tales from ‘The Earthly Paradise’ are in the following collections: A volume of 86 preliminary drawings of various sizes executed in pencil, pen and ink or chalk, is now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (648’27). A series of 47 finished designs in pencil on tracing paper was given by Burne-Jones to Ruskin, who presented them to Oxford University in 1875 (now in the Ashmolean). Another volume of 39 drawings formerly in the collection of F.S. Ellis is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; 36 of these are on tracing paper, the remaining 3 on drawing paper; 21 relate to the Cupid and Psyche story though some are variants of scenes which were never engraved on wood; others are for the Story of Pygmalion and The Hill of Venus.