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Late Victorian era British scrapbook of chromolithographic plates
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Held at: University of Delaware Library Special Collections [Contact Us]181 South College Avenue, Newark, DE 19717-5267
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Delaware Library Special Collections. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
This late nineteenth-century British album, created by an unknown author, features scraps, chromolithographic prints, and original artwork, with many images containing motifs of Orientalism and depictions of the colonial British Far East. Other common themes include fashion, religion, literature, and landscapes.
There are several examples of artwork in this scrapbook that appear to be original watercolor or hand-colored prints, featuring social castes of India, laborers, and characters in different occupations. These images include an elephant caravan, a shoemaker, a woman carrying shells, a Brahmin woman, a dressing boy, a barber, and a mother and child with baskets.
There is also a series of chromolithographic prints depicting English fashions from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including one that illustrates the costumes of members of a court of nobility. There several fashion prints of women in dresses made in 1809 by John Bell.
Several color scraps and commemorative cards depict members of British royalty; among these depictions are Queen Alexandra, King Edward VII, Queen Consort Mary of Teck, and King George V. A monochromatic engraved illustration of HMS Conway, a wooden full-rigged training ship of the British Navy, also appears.
Several chromolithographic prints were originally published in “Album of Color Printing” by Alf Cooke; among these titles are “The Old Battlefield” and “Jon Anderson My Jo.” Color illustrations of anthropormphic animals by Harrison Weir taken from Alfred Elwes'
The Adventures of a Bear, and a Great Bear too. Another series of chromolithographs were apparently taken from a single publication, including the prints titled "Self-Denial," "Old Age," "Youth," "Courage," "The Lifeboat," and "Justice."Also appearing in this volume are five cigar box labels from Habana, Cuba, printed in color and gilded with gold foil; among the cigar makers represented are “Jose Alonso,” “Alvarez, Lopez y Ca,” and “La Flor De Jose Suarez Murias y Ca.”
One unique color plate depicts an actor dressed in an Elizabethan costume with a marginal description written in pencil, “Mr. Tree as 'Malvolio,'” and bearing the artist’s signature, “CHAS. A. BUCHEL.” This image is a reproduction of an oil painting by Buchel, depicting the actor, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, portraying the character Malvolio in his own production of “Twelfth Night” at Her Majesty’s Theater in London from 1901; this color plate was produced by Carl Hentschel Ltd, London, using the Hentschel-Colourtype process.
In the last quarter of the volume, a highly irridescent butterfly is affixed to a page. This is an actual insect and not a scrap.
Item 0046: Shelved in SPEC MSS 0093 medium
Unknown
Processed by Tim Pouch, April, 2013. Encoded by Rivi Feinsilber, February 2018.
People
Subject
- Publisher
- University of Delaware Library Special Collections
- Finding Aid Author
- University of Delaware Library, Special Collections
- Finding Aid Date
- 2018 February 13
- Access Restrictions
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The collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
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Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, https://library.udel.edu/static/purl.php?askspec