Binding for Bryant’s Poems

Albert Warren, designer

1860

Gilt blocking on red cloth.

9¼ x 6½ inches

Though unsigned, this elaborate cloth binding is unmistakeably the work of Albert Warren. The swirling stems and rosettes appear elsewhere in his work, and the design was re-used, this time with the artist’s monogram, on the re-issue of Alfred Tennyson’s Poems in 1861 (a new edition of the ‘Moxon Tennyson’). The elaborate pergola framing the title reflects the influence of Germanic book design of the 1840s and also incorporates motifs taken from Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, which Warren helped to prepare in 1856.

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    Photograph and text by Simon Cooke

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