Designs for the Whitelands' cross by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt ARA (1833-1898). 1883. Courtesy of the F. J. Sharpe Collection, Queens College of the University of New York. This is Plate 77 in Charlotte Gere's Victorian Jewellery Design, which is available in the Victorian Web (see bibliography). Click on the image to enlarge it.
Whitelands College, dating from 1841, is the original foundation of the four colleges of the University of Roehampton, in south-west London. A pioneering teachers' training college established by the Church of England, this was an early provider of higher education for women. It was then based in King's Road, Chelsea, and from the later 1870s John Ruskin took a keen interest in it, as he did in education generally, including, less commonly for the time, women's education. He initiated a May Festival there in 1881 (Atwood 156), and the college holds an annual Ruskin Lecture to this day. The cross shown here was most probably intended for presentation to the chosen May Queen:
At the first May Queen festival at Whitelands, held in 1881, Miss Ellen Osborne was crowned Queen by her peers and presented with a gold cross and 40 or so bound volumes to distribute among her schoolmates at her discretion. The festival followed the same procedure every year, although the gold cross was often of different workmanship. designed by either Burme-Jones, Joan or Arthur Severn, or various other artists; the number of books varied from year to year as well.... [Atwood 156]
Indeed, Charlotte Gere records a letter actually written to the artist by Ruskin on 1 May 1883, in which he enthuses over the finished cross. Gere also reports that there was a tradition at the college that "Burne-Jones's cross was decorated with enamel," but adds that "nothing in the correspondence about the design supports this theory" (160); also, that its location is now unknown. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Bibliography
Atwood, Sara. Ruskin's Educational Ideals. Pbk ed. London: Routledge, 2024. [Review of original hardback edition.]
Gere, Charlotte. Victorian Jewellery Design. London: William Kimber, 1972. [complete text]
Created 21 September 2025