Shaw, Henry

The encyclopædia of ornament. Illustrated by a series of fifty-three plates of ironwork, lacework, and needlework, tapestry, stained glass, bookbindings, tiles, panels, screens, etc.

Edinburgh, John Grant 1904.

Reference: 07693
Price: £25 [convert currency]

Full Description

Folio. (iii)-viiipp (lacking half-title), (60) colour & b+w engr. plates incl. engr. title, one plate loose. Publisher’s cloth, worn at extremities, inner hinge cracking but still sound. Ex-library copy, gilt library classmark on spine, rule sheet &c. on front pastedown endpaper, small circular library stamp to title and verso of plates, punch stamp to title; rectos of plates fresh. Roderick Gradidge’s copy.

Facsimile reproductions of this collection of engravings, first published 1842, of mostly ecclesiastical ornament of the middle ages) by the architectural draughtsman and illustrator Henry Shaw (1800-1873), with the original colour engraved title page. Shaw had started his career as a draughtsman assisting John Britton on the ‘Cathedral Antiquities’ series, but soon began to produce a succession of illustrated books of his own on such subjects as ornament, furniture and interior decoration, largely based on mediaeval precedents.