Main Content
Summary
Author: Buckler, (J.C. & C.A.) (and Ewing, Alexander)
Title: The cathedral, or abbey church of Iona. A series of drawings, and descriptive letterpress of the ruins, by the Messrs. Bucklers, architects, Oxford ; and some account of the early Celtic church, and of the mission of St.Columba, by the Right Rev. the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles.
Publication: London, Day & Son 1866.
Price: £245
Reference: 09272
Full Description
4to. (6) + 78pp, 18 tinted litho plates (including perspective views, ground plans and measured illustrations of architectural detail). Publisher’s pictorial boards (carrying representations of St.Columba), cloth spine. Minor loss of surface from spine at head and foot, outer corners of binding rubbed.
A scarce book, incorporating an architectural description of the abbey of Iona and a good series of lithographic illustrations of its surviving remains. Both the architectural part of the text and the illustrations were provided by the Oxford-based architectural draughtsmen J.C.Buckler and C.A.Buckler, who had presumably prepared the text and made the drawings on which the illustrations are based in or before 1847 (the date 1847 appears on p.78, at the end of the Bucklers’ portion of the volume’s text). Unusually for a book of this date and size, the book was issued in pictorial boards, of which the front cover carries a coloured representation of St.Columba standing, and the back cover a coloured image of the abbey’s seal, with a device of St.Columba in a boat.