(Londesborough Collection) Fairholt, Frederick W., and Wright, Thomas
Miscellanea graphica : representations of ancient, medieval, and renaissance remains in the possession of Lord Londesborough. Drawn, engraved, and described by Frederick W.Fairholt, F.S.A. … the historical introduction by Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A.
London, Chapman and Hall 1857.
Full Description
Folio. Engraved frontispiece, decorative litho title leaf (partly coloured), 84pp, 44 plates (mostly litho or tinted litho, but including 11 which are chromolitho or otherwise coloured), each with facing leaf of printed text. Early twentieth century quarter brown morocco, cloth sides. From the Birmingham Assay Office Library (from which this copy has been recently de-accessioned), with their small circular ownership stamp at foot of front free endpaper, and pencil shelf-mark, but no other library markings. A good copy.
A handsome volume describing and illustrating the high spots from the collection of ancient, mediaeval and renaissance antiquities formed by Albert Denison, 1st Baron Londesborough (1805-1860), better known to his contemporaries as Lord Albert Conyngham or as Lord Albert Denison. Londesborough, a wealthy aristocrat by birth, had inherited a vast fortune from a Denison uncle in 1849, and at the end of his life owned 100,000 acres in Yorkshire which provided him with an income of £50,000 a year, enabling him to spend lavishly in putting together a collection which comprised items from archaeological excavations, some of the Lewis chessmen, helmets, body armour, and medieval and renaissance objets d’art of many kinds, including a large collection of finger rings and some fine examples of goldsmith’s work. All the best of these were carefully drawn, engraved and described for the present volume by F.W.Fairholt, one of Lord Londesborough’s closest associates and protegés, and a well-written introduction was supplied by the antiquary Thomas Wright (1810-1877).