A Thurible or Censer

Henry Shaw

28 x 18.2 cm.

Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 40

Source: The Decorative Arts Ecclesiastical and Civil of the Middle Ages

Collection: Redwood Library and Athenaeum.

The Decorative Arts Ecclesiastical and Civil of the Middle Ages is a catalogue of medieval decorative arts illustrated with chromolithographs and wood engravings augmented by descriptions that contain provenance and stylistic attributions. To reinforce the historical ambience of his text, Henry Shaw drew illuminated initial letters coinciding in style with some of the pictured objects. Shaw's ten earlier books for the practicing architect-designer and antiquarian established his reputation as a major author in these fields. [continued below]

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Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith

Two important influences early in his career shaped the form and content of Shaw's uses of illuminated manuscripts: his training as an architectural draughtsman and his association with Sir Frederic Madden. The architectural draughtsman's shorthand manner of preparing detailed drawings of small sections of repeated elements predisposed him to illustrate parts of his sources rather than entire works. His earliest book. Details of Gothic Architecture (1823), is illustrated with the strips of ornament one encounters in many oyhis other works. Shaw's awareness of manuscripts as sources of historical ornament was enriched by his work with Sir Frederic Madden on Illuminated Ornaments Selected from Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in 1833 (cat. 14).

The association with Madden formed his view of the history of manuscript arts as a continuous progression crowned by the achievements of the sixteenth-century illuminator Giulio Clovio. In The Decorative Arts Shaw chose a page of Clovio's work and a fragment from another sixteenth-century manuscript as his only examples of illuminated works, although he did discuss illumination and bookbinding in his introduction.

On the page illustrated here, which deals for the most part with thirteenth- and fourteenth-century objects, Shaw drew an initial C derived from late thirteenth- to early fourteenth-century illuminations. The two candle stands illustrated on this page are attributed to the thirteenth- and fourteenth-centuries; the tripod is of ecclesiastical origin and the elephant of secular use. Shaw drew three monks chanting inside his initial C to suggest a church environment. Such use of decoration to reinforce the message of the text is what John Ruskin had in mind when he said he wanted to rewrite all prayer books in the medieval manner (Surtees 175). Shaw conceived of this page and each of the others as an artistic unit, signing them in the lower comer with his HS monogram.

References

Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.

Shaw, Henry. The Decorative Arts Ecclesiastical and Civil of the Middle Ages. London: William Pickering, 1851. Designer-Illuminator: Henry Shaw. Binder: C. Lewis.

Thorpe, James. Book of Hours, Illuminations by Simon Marmion. San Marino: The Huntington Library, n.d.

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Last modified 27 December 2013