663. The Announcement of the Vale Shakespeare

The Academy. A Weekly Review of Literature and Life of 17 March 1900 published some critical notes on the announcement of the Vale Shakespaere. By this time, its editor was Charles Lewis Hind (1862-1927) who previously had been editor of The Art Journal and Pall Mall, and was a co-founder of The Studio. 

Cover illustration for The Academy (1900)
[KB, National Library, The Hague]

His ironic contribution (I assume he wrote these paragraphs) highlighted that the merits of the private press publications were small because of the small print runs and that the books were exploited by investors.

The Vale Press artists think that “no edition of Shakespeare’s Plays at present exists that is notable as a finely-printed book on paper whose permanence is undoubted.” So the Vale Press is going to issue its own Shakespeare, printed in a new “Avon” fount of small pica type, and adorned with borders and half-borders by Mr. Rickett[s]. Each play will be issued in a demy 8vo volume, and separate schemes of internal decoration have been arranged for the Tragedies, Comedies and Histories. Good! The world will soon have its well-printed enduring edition of Shakespeare. Scholars, book-lovers, critics – rise, welcome it in your myriads! Stay – what is this? “Only 310 sets of the Vale Shakespeare will be printed, of which 100 sets are for sale in the United States of America and 187 sets in Great Britain . . . The whole of the English edition of the Vale Shakespeare has been taken up by collectors and the trade.” Vale! 

Unfortunately these special editions are always exploited by speculators and those who have never before made a penny out of books succumb to the temptation. Only last week a gentleman having bought his right to a copy of the edition at 16s. a volume, transferred the right the next day, at a profit of 5s. a volume. The publication of the edition would have begun last year had it not been for the fire at Messrs. Ballantyne’s, which destroyed the type and the sheets of the first two volumes. (The Academy, 17 March 1900, p. 216)

The Acadamy (17 March 1900)

The notice was briefly summarised in the Dutch magazine De Kroniek of 25 March 1900. Hacon & Ricketts had announced the Shakespeare edition with a four-page prospectus (including order form) that probably appeared in the last quarter of the previous year. However, a fire at the printing firm on 9 December 1899 necessitated a delay. 

The wording of The Academy is often literally that of the prospectus - which does not refer to the fire. The magazine seems to be relying on this same prospectus, as if Hacon & Ricketts reused it as an announcement without modification. There were, however, two other notices referring to the fire either because it caused the publication programme to grind to a halt or to report which books were now still available. It is somewhat puzzling why no new announcement was made in February/March 1900. It would have been quite logical, although the books that had appeared in 1899 had all been fully subscribed. 

And there is another puzzle. When the announcement was sent out in 1899, the press did not pay any attention to it. It was only after the fire that it was reported that the Vale Press was working on this multi-volume edition to be published between 1900 and 1903.

The only solution is that it was not sent to the press at the time, but to Vale Press subscribers, dealers and collectors, and apparently, their numbers were sufficient to sell out the entire edition. That would explain why the Shakespeare was fully subscribed in advance, as one of the two later notices explained: 

Any subscribers who desire to cancel their orders on account of this postponement are requested to notify their intention at once, so that arrangements may be made for the transfer of their sets to those who were previously disappointed.

But, as The Academy, stated, in the meantime, there were subscribers who wanted to profit from it and instead of withdrawing their subscription, they sold it for high amounts to other collectors or dealers. One of those was John Lane, who from the latter half of 1900 was the sole agent for the Vale Press in America. He offered to buy back Vale Press books, only to sell them for higher prices.

662. A Working Drawing for an Exhibition Room

Charles Shannon focused mainly on his fine art in lithography, pencil or oil. But in the early days he designed and made furniture, later, when Ricketts and he resided in the Keep of Chilham Castle, he designed fabrics for the four-poster beds. On occasion he designed a baptismal font, magisterial dressing gowns or the likes.  Although there is a catalogue of his lithographs, a survey of his paintings has never been published, and an inventory of his decorative works will probably never be made.

After his death, Christie's auctioned a four-fold screen. It is listed in Catalogue of Drawings and Paintings comprising […] Paintings by C.H. Shannon, R.A. Esq. Sold by Order of the Executors […]. London, Sotheby & Co., 29 March 1939, p. 18, no. 114, and described as 'A four-fold screen depicting various harvesting scenes by C.H. Shannon, R.A. each panel 70in. by 36in.' It was sold for £3 15s to Francis Howard.

Perhaps this was the 'decorative panel' called 'Autumn' that Shannon had exhibited in 1923 at the Royal Academy, see Exhibition of Decorative Art. Winter Exhibition Forty-Eighth Year. London, William Clowes and Sons, Printers to the Royal Academy [1923], p. [1], no. 2. 

In most cases, there are no images of such decorative works.

The British Museum holds a working drawing for a design that may have been intended as a tapestry, a folding screen, a tiled tableau, or some other type of decoration. It has no title.

Charles Shannon, Figures decorating an interior
[Location: British Museum, London: 1962,0809.32]
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
[© With permission of the executors of the Charles Ricketts estate,
Leonie Sturge-Moore and Charmain O'Neil]

The drawing on paper (see the description on the British Museum website) is a brush drawing in grey ink, and graphite, squared for transfer, 34 x 43.2 cm. It is inscribed 'Shannon', and: 'Study for a Decoration'. Numbers have been written on the left-hand side.

It is an interior scene, in which ten characters engage in different activities. On the left side are tall windows, and a figure standing on a ladder arranging the curtains, aided by another on the floor.

Charles Shannon, Figures decorating an interior (detail)
[Location: British Museum, London: 1962,0809.32]
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
[© With permission of the executors of the Charles Ricketts estate,
Leonie Sturge-Moore and Charmain O'Neil]

To their right, on the floor in the foreground sits a figure, apparently lifting a rug to some extent, perhaps to straighten it. 

In the corner by the window is a cabinet on legs. Paintings hang from left to right on the back wall.

Charles Shannon, Figures decorating an interior (detail)
[Location: British Museum, London: 1962,0809.32]
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
[© With permission of the executors of the Charles Ricketts estate,
Leonie Sturge-Moore and Charmain O'Neil]

In the left-hand corner, a figure supports another, standing on a ladder, hand held to the top edge of a painting, presumably to hang it straight.

Next to them is a figure with a broom, while in front of this person another worker kneels on the ground, apparently with a dustpan and brush.

Charles Shannon, Figures decorating an interior (detail)
[Location: British Museum, London: 1962,0809.32]
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
[© With permission of the executors of the Charles Ricketts estate,
Leonie Sturge-Moore and Charmain O'Neil]

On the right, a person is holding a painting in front of a seated figure, while in the middle behind them another figure is holding a painting diagonally. In front of the seated figure appears to be a table (perhaps the person sits in a wheelchair?).

The scene seems to be this: a room is transformed into a temporary exhibition space, or a personal gallery of paintings. The patron is then the seated figure.

661. An American Vale Press Collector: Frederick W. Lehmann

Frederick William Lehmann (1853-1931) was an American lawyer, politician, United States Solicitor General, and rare book collector.

His parents had moved to the US from Prussia when he was two years old, his mother died young, and because of his father's strict upbringing, he ran away from home when he was ten. He roamed the Midwest, as a shepherd, farmhand or newspaper boy. When he was seventeen, he worked on the farm of Judge Epenetus Sears of Tabor, Iowa, who was so much impressed with his ability that he sent him to Tabor College. Lehmann graduated in 1873, and practised law in several cities. In 1890 he moved to St. Louis, Missouri. Active in Iowa politics, in 1910 William Howard Taft named him as United States Solicitor General. He had a remarkable, possibly photographic memory and was called 'the best educated man in St. Louis.'

F.W. Lehmann (1914)
[Wikimedia Commons]

He also manifested himself tirelessly on the cultural front, being a founder of the St. Louis Art Museum and the State Historical Society of Missouri and a president of the St. Louis Public Library. As a bibliophile, he collected works by Robert Burns and Charles Dickens and illustrations by George Cruikshank and Aubrey Beardsley.

He left a collection of autographs to the Missouri Historical Collection. The Frederick William Lehmann Papers at the Washington University St. Louis contain letters, pictures and documents of American political figures and authors including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Thackeray, and ephemera such as bookplates and calling cards.

He had the vast majority of his collection auctioned off at the Anderson Galleries in New York in 1930: A Charles Dickens Collection of Superlative Merit and Equally Fine First Editions of American and English Authors. The Library of the Honorable Frederick W. Lehmann St. Louis. MO. The catalogue [read the contents here] shows that his collection was rich in first editions of Dickens (lots 233-366), Emerson, Harte, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and others. 

Strengths, moreover, included extra-illustrated copies and bindings (such as an edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland bound by Cobden-Sanderson), and private press editions: The Cuala Press (42 books), Daniel Press (4 books),  The Doves Press (5 books), Essex House Press (5 books), Kelmscott Press (36 books  in 46 volumes [not including Chaucer], of which one printed on vellum), The Vale Press (18 volumes).

A Charles Dickens Collection of Superlative Merit and Equally Fine First Editions
of American and English Authors. The Library of the Honorable
Frederick W. Lehmann St. Louis. MO (1930, p. 158)

The Vale Press books were offered in one lot (unlike the other private press books). A few things can be noted. 

First, the lot contains two books published not by the Vale Press, but by George Allen in London: John Ruskin's Of King's Treasures and Of Queen's Gardens. These books were printed by the Ballantyne Press, the firm where Ricketts also had his books printed, and even though the publisher's name is clearly stated in the colophon, these books were often attributed to the Vale Press. [See my earlier blog 'A Summer's Miscellany of Mistakes (1)'.]

That leaves: 18 volumes. Compared to Kelmscott Press, Lehmann owned a smaller collection of Vale Press books (still relatively large).

The incomplete set contains one pre-Vale edition: Daphnis & Chloe (but not: Hero and Leander). Lehmann did not have copies of the magazine The Dial (he did acquire copies of magazines that printed Beardsley's illustrations, such as The Savoy).

Nor does the set include the much-sought-after volumes with wood-engravings by Ricketts, such as The Parables, but it does include the last book illustrated by Ricketts: T.S. Moore's Danae that has three wood-engravings by Ricketts.

The set is made up of volumes that reprinted early English poetry by Suckling, Drayton, Campion, Constable, Chatterton, and The King's Quair. There is also prose by French author Maurice de Guérin and the memoirs of Cellini.

Of the programmatic works, he owned only Ricketts's A Defence of the Revival of Printing (1899).

Notable is John Gray's religious collection, Spiritual Poems, but particularly the four plays by Michael Field, and Lehmann thus owned all the Vale Press editions by this author. Indeed, he collected all the editions of contemporary authors in the Vale Press publishing fund.

The tentative conclusion may be that Lehmann was mainly interested in private press editions of literary texts by contemporary authors and that he found editions by more or less forgotten authors equally fascinating. He was less interested in Ricketts as a book artist.

660. A Foundling Abandoned

At the beginning of the story of Daphnis and Chloe (which Ricketts and Shannon illustrated with wood-engravings), the two main characters are discovered individually as foundlings, one by goatherd Lamo, the other two years later by the shepherd Dryas. Both discoveries were sketched by Ricketts, but only the scene of Dryas finding Chloe after following a ewe into a sacred cave, was executed for the book. 

This scene provided an opportunity to depict Chloe's (and also Daphnis') special origin with a circular well and the interior of a cave with statues of three nymphs and a panel with a Greek inscription. 

This sacred space offered an appropriate, solemn beginning for a love story on Lesbos, more than the depiction of the landscape where Daphnis was found.

Charles Ricketts, pencil sketch, Lamo finding Daphnis
[British Library: 1946,0209.62]
(Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license)

Apparently it took Ricketts and Shannon a while to drop one of the two scenes, because Ricketts made (and kept) not only a pencil drawing of Lamo and Daphnis, but also an advanced sketch, pen and ink with black chalk, touched with white bodycolour. (Both have been pasted into an album and photographed somewhat askew).

Both, the pencil sketch (11.4 x 15.4 cm) and the drawing (9.6 x 12 cm), depict the shepherd in a rural landscape with some trees and the foundling in the lower right hand corner.

Charles Ricketts, drawing, Lamo finding Daphnis
[British Library: 1946,0209.63]
(Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license)

659. An Unused Broom

In 1893, one of the books Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon jointly provided with wood-engravings was published, Daphnis and Chloe. The story by Longus is set on the Greek island of Lesbos. The thirty-seven scenes depicted (one of which appears as a publisher's emblem in the colophon) are largely set outdoors. There is one print with a simultaneous indoor and outdoor scene (as in a Japanese drawing) and there are ten that take place entirely indoors. 

Charles Ricketts, sketch for a wood-engraving for Daphnis and Chloe (not executed)
[British Museum, London: 1946,0209.59: Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

The British Museum preserves some sketches that were not executed in wood-engraving. One is described as: 'whole-length figure sitting in a room, broom propped against adjacent wall. c.1893'. It is a pen and ink drawing, touched with white bodycolour, 10,4 x 12,3 cm.

Of the remaining sketches, this is the only one that also takes place indoors, although on the right we look out through an open door. A basket hangs on the wall to the right. The only drama in this sketch is the leaves swirling in as a contrast to the tired-looking woman.

This autumnal scene was apparently rejected for the book but, remarkably, Ricketts kept the sketch in a scrapbook.

658. Charles Ricketts about Frans Hals

In letters, in his diary and in his book The Prado, Charles Ricketts mentioned the name of the Dutch painter Frans Hals several times. Fifty key works by Hals are now on show at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam. (Read more about the exhibition here.) Time to take stock of Ricketts's views on Hals.

Frans Hals, 'Portrait of a Man' (c.1634)
[Mauritshuis, The Hague]

Between 1901 and 1930, the name occasionally comes up in Ricketts's work.

On a visit to Paris in 1901, tired by the noise of cars, horses, people, horns and bells, both Ricketts and Shannon needed some time to let the paintings in the Louvre speak to them. Six hours a day they wandered around there, looking for their favourite works, but Titian and Leonarda da Vinci were hiding from their eyes, and:

for some days painters whose qualities are utterly exterior charmed, or rather interested us most, i.e. Veronese and Hals, both unusually excellent in the Louvre.
(Diary, 6 June 1901; see also Self-Portrait, 1939, p. 58).

The following three comments are from his 1903 book The Prado. In a review of Velasquez's 'The Spinners', Ricketts says that this work was created in fits and starts over a long period of time, eventually making it look completely different from what the painter initially envisaged:

This is possible, for Velasquez was not in temper or in art a spontaneous painter, and let it be said that those other men of facile execution and vision (like Frans Hals, for instance) are really 'improvisers' contenting themselves with what comes to hand. Their facility is of the wrist, not of the intellect: theirs is more a memory of the fingers than of the brain.

(The Prado, 1903, p. 85)

In a review of Titian's work, he mentions Hals again - only now he spells his first name as if it were German, with a z:

No artist, however objective, is able to eliminate his personality from his portraits - be he Franz Hals, who swaggers, or Goya, who is nervous, irritable, and unbalanced.

(The Prado, 1903, p. 140)

Another comparison with Veronese's work was made by Ricketts in a paragraph about Titian's 'facility of holding the spectator [...] by a more gradual process of appeal underlying the fine outer aspect of the work':

Some painters we have no occasion to look at more than once, for their work repeats one thing only; this is true of most pictures by Veronese and Franz Hals; their works fail to hold more than one impression. This is not due to their summary and emphatic workmanship alone; their minds were of the same pattern.

(The Prado, 1903, p. 144)

Ricketts missed a degree of depth in Hals's work that he did find in the paintings of the artist he admired most (and about whom he wrote a separate book), Titian.

Frans Hals, 'Portrait of a Man' (c.1650-52)
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

In August 1903, Ricketts made an art trip on his own. In Vienna, he visited the Liechtenstein family's private museum (a 'sunny Rococo' palace 'with a garden entrance') where he admired a portrait by Frans Hals from c.1650-52. It hung in a room full of masterpieces:

In one room hung with 21 pictures there are 11 fine Van Dyck portraits, the magnificent full length Hals, and 2 sketches by Rubens.
(Letter to Charles Shannon, 27 August 1903: BL Add MS 58085, f. 30)

In February 1912, Ricketts and Shannon travelled to the Netherlands and saw some Hals paintings:

We liked what we saw of Holland, that is, The Hague and Amsterdam, the country was invisible owing to fog. At Haarlem we saw nothing save the Frans Hals pictures, the town was invisible, merely white mist. 

[...]

I was enchanted with Ver Meer and one has to go to Holland to see Frans Hals. I hear with consternation that they intend cleaning his Haarlem pictures; that would be a national disaster as many of the pictures in Holland have been overcleaned. It would be more, – it would be a world-disaster!

(Letter to Richard Roland Holst, mid to late February 1912: Typed transcription, BL Add MS 61715, f. 137-8)

In November 1916, he mentioned the importance of the Haarlem collection to D.S. MacCall.

During the Summer of 1921, Léonce Bénédite, the director of the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, came to stay at Chilham Castle. He was 'full of anecdotes about Degas, Rodin, Puvis, their relatives and scandals', Ricketts said and in a letter he concluded:

Have you noticed that realistic artists seem always a little inferior as men, – Hals, Courbet, and Monet?

(Letter to Richard Roland Holst, Summer 1921: Typed transcription, BL Add MS 61719, ff. 100-2)

In 1924, Ricketts discussed Hals's position with painter/critic Jacques-Émile Blanche:

Your estimate of Frans Hals is true only if you compare him to the greatest masters. I demur over the value you set on his last works. Fromentin has analysed this question (in relation to Manet) in a way that I consider final.
(Letter to Jacques-Émile Blanche, Christmas 1924: Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France: MS 7055, f. 7)

About the later work of Frans Hals, Blanche had written:

Hals, except in the paintings of his old age (Haarlem Museum), enveloped in an atmosphere of poetry and mystery, was a simple master of the brush; his drawing was that of a calligrapher, with a lively, witty style and a fairly restrained realism.

Hals, si ce n'est dans les toiles de sa vieillesse (musée de Haarlem) envelopées d'une atmosphère de poésie et de mystère, fut un simple maître de la brosse; son dessin avait été celui d'un calligraphe, de style alerte, spirituel, d'un reealisme assez court.

(Jacques-Émile Blanche, Manet. Paris: F. Rieder & Cie, éditeurs, 1924, p. 40)

Ricketts, apparently, did not agree with the 'poetry and mystery' qualification.

The next time Ricketts mentioned the painter Hals was in a letter to Eric Brown, director of the National Gallery in Ontario, who was then in London to purchase paintings. Ricketts was his  adviser. A Hals was for sale at Agnew's and Ricketts wrote:

I do not care hugely for the Franz Hals it is a powerful pot boiler done late in his earlier manner i.e. it was intended to show he was still valid &, I think, vulgar. 

(Letter to Eric Brown, 17 May 1925: National Gallery of Canada)

The Van Horne mansion in Montreal, c.1890
[Collection of the McCord Stewart Museum]

In 1927, Ricketts travelled to the museum in Ontario and to other places in Canada and the USA. In Montreal, he was shown the private collection of Sir William Van Horne (who had died in 1915). To Shannon he wrote about the Dutch paintings:

He has 4 good Rembrandts, 3 Franz Hals good & unusual.

(Letter to Charles Shannon, 23 October 1927: BL Add MS 58085, f. 89)

Two days later, in a letter to Mary Davis, he wrote that there were four Frans Hals paintings.

Van Horn possessed a 'Portrait of a Dutch Gentleman', a 'Portrait of a Dutch Lady', both dated 1637 (current owner: The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp), and the 'Portrait of Samuel Ampzing', c.1630 (current owner: the Leiden Collection of T.S. and D.R. Kaplan). He also had a portrait called 'The Jolly Toper' (attributed to Frans Hals). These were all hanging in the Reception Room (cf. Mary Eggermont-Molenaar, The William Van Horne Collection. A Dutch Treat. 2015, p. 402).

During the same trip, in Toronto, Ricketts visited the house of Frank Porter Wood, who owned two Frans Hals paintings:

His two Frans Hals are superb, one latish you dont know – head & shoulders
(Letter to Charles Shannon, 1-2 November 1927: BL Add MS 58085, f. 102)

These paintings were later bequeathed to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto: 'Portrait of Isaak Abrahamsz. Massa' (1626) and 'Portrait of Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne' (c.1655).

The same month, in New York, Ricketts visited the Metropolitan Museum, where:

The Veronese Mars & Venus hangs between two marvellous F Hals.

(Letter to Charles Shannon, 13 November 1927: BL Add MS 58085, f. 111)

The museum owns eleven Hals paintings. Later, in the Frick Collection, he admired another Frans Hals, 'Portrait of a Man', c.1660:

the Spencer Hals, man with cuffs

(Letter to Charles Shannon, 18 November 1927: BL Add MS 58085, f. 113)

The name of Spencer refers to the former owner, Frederick, 4th Earl Spencer.

Frans Hals, 'Portrait of a Man', c.1660
[The Frick Collection, New York]

In the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, he expressed the qualities of Frans Hals in general (we don't know which painting he saw):

very good Hals – he is always good

(Letter to Charles Shannon, 23 November 1927: BL Add MS 58085, f. 116)

Summarizing his view of the Canadian and American collections, he wrote:

Frans Hals is represented in perfection. – I am now speaking of private collections
(Letter to Richard Roland Holst, 7 December 1927: Typed transcription, BL Add MS 61720, ff. 151-5)

He repeated his remark about the richness of these private collections in a letter to Marie Sturge Moore, comparing the houses he visited with Shannon's and his own Townshend House:

The quality of the private treasure is unimaginable, in houses very inferior in type to Townshend House you will find famous Rembrandts, Titians & Franz Hals, & some of the best Goyas & Grecos are there, the Rembrandts being unimaginable.

(Letter to Marie Sturge Moore, 8 December 1927: BL Add MS 58086, ff. 171-2)

Finally, on a journey to Germany, he mentioned Hals in a letter to Francis Ernest Jackson after visiting the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, were he probably saw the portrait of Willem Croes, 1660-62. This painting (47,1 x 34,4 cm) was acquired in 1906:

An admirable small Franz Hals

(Letter Francis Ernest Jackson, 10 April 1930: Oregon University Library)

Whereas Ricketts was initially hesitant about the art of Frans Hals and detested his later work, over the years, as he became acquainted with the painter's masterpieces, he forgave him those more superficial paintings and even concluded that his work was 'always good'.

(John Aplin provided all transcriptions of letters and diary notes.)

657. Vale Press Collectors: Beda and Waldemar Zachrisson

Last week I wrote that no Vale Press books could be found in Scandinavian libraries, but that was not quite true. While there are no complete collections, a single collecting couple has donated eight books published by the firm of Hacon & Ricketts to the University Library of Gothenburg (Göteborg). These eight books bear the bookplate of Waldemar and Beda Zachrisson.

Bookplate of Wald & Beda Zachrisson

Wald or Peter Anders Waldemar Zachrisson (1861-1924) chose the printing trade and during several years was apprenticed to or worked for printers in Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg and St Petersburg. Influenced by the ideas of William Morris, Zachrisson set out to reform Swedish typography, (co)founding the Swedish Typographic Association in 1893, founding a printing museum and a printing school and publishing a typography yearbook, Boktryckeri-Kalender (1892-1921).

Boktryckeri-Kalender 1902-1903

The yearbook showed pictures of the modern equipment available in his own print shop, some of which could apparently be operated by the youngest clerk. In 1908, he employed 200 people, including lithographers and bookbinders.

Advertisement in Boktryckeri-Kalender 1902-1903

His wife, Beda Zachrisson (born Carlberg in 1867), outlived him by more than 20 years, and died in 1944. Not all their books ended up in Gothenburg University Library. For example, Sotheby's once sold an incunabulum, Historia romana (Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, Bernhard Maler and Peter Löslein, 1477), part 2 of which had the couple's bookplate.

The collection in Gothenburg is a carefully chosen selection of books that illustrated the example of the Printing Revival from the time of William Morris. The collection of 99 volumes includes editions from the Kelmscott Press, Doves Press, Ashendene Press, Eragny Press, Vale Press and other presses from 1890 to 1920. [Read more about Waldemar Zachrisson prints collection and about the contents of the collection.]

There are twenty books printed at the Kelmscott Press (including A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press) [Gothenburg also owns a copy of the Chaucer edition], five books from the Doves Press (including The Ideal book or Book Beautiful) and eight from the Vale Press. 

Zachrisson owned copies of the following Vale Press books:

Milton's Early Poems (1896), 

Pissaro's and Ricketts's De la typographie et de l'harmonie de la page imprimée; William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers (1898), 

Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel (1898), 

William Blake's Poetical Sketches (1899), 

Ricketts's A Defence of the Revival of Printing (1899), 

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1901), 

Ecclesiastes; or, The preacher, and the Song of Solomon (1902)

and 

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1903). 

It is impossible to say what drove Zachrisson to select these eight titles, other than that he wanted to collect some examples of the Vale Press. It seems he tried to buy at least the theoretical texts about printing from most of the private presses (in this case, only the bibliography with Ricketts's important introduction is missing). He was clearly not concerned with English literary texts or Ricketts's illustrations.

In an article in his own yearbook, Zachrisson wrote a paragraph about the Vale Press (see for a digital copy Internet Archive):

Next to the Kelmscott books, I would like to put in time sequence, if not in rank, the works from 'The Vale press', a printing house of half private character, founded in 1887 by the artists Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. One of the Vale books was featured in the Boktryckerikalendern 1898-99, namely 'The Revival of Printing'. However, as the Vale books are particularly distinguished for their wood-engravings and are otherwise interesting, we reproduce here two of them, one of them is Poetical Sketches by William Blake, printed in Vale type with woodcuts by Charles Ricketts by the Ballantyne Press and the other is Les Ballades de Maistre Francois Villon. The latter book, published in 226 copies, is provided with woodcuts, initials and borders drawn and cut by Lucien and Ester Pissaro and printed in Vale type by the Eragny Press, an affiliate of the Vale press. (Wald. Zachrisson, ‘Tankar om bokutstyrsel, III’, in: Boktryckeri-Kalender 1902-1903. Göteborg: Zachrisson, 1903, p. 105-[129].)

Images of a Vale Press and an Eragny Press book
in Boktryckeri-Kalender 1902-1903

Earlier, in the 1898-99 edition of his yearbook, Zachrisson had published images of the Vale Press edition of A Defence of the Revival of Printing (probably his own copy) and of the pre-Vale edition of Hero and Leander (1894), but it is not clear whether he owned a copy of this book. This edition of the Boktryckeri-Kalender opened with an illustrated article about William Morris and the Kelmscott Press.

[Thanks are due to Marja Smolenaars, who sent me a link to Libris, the Swedish catalogue, and to Stefan Benjaminsson, Humanistiska biblioteket, Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek, for answering a query.]

656. Where Are All These Copies Now?

The edition of the Vale Press publications varied between 150 and 320 copies. So at most 150 complete collections may exist, but many public collections contain only a few volumes, although some are more complete or even exhaustive.

Where did copies of an arbitrary Vale Press book end up, for example, Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson - alternative title on the spine and in the colophon: Lyric Poems. The book was published in 1900. This is certainly not one of the most desirable volumes of Ricketts's publications - the volume is not illustrated with wood-engravings and - even in 1900 - there were so many other editions of Tennyson's work for sale. The same goes for its companion volume In Memoriam.

Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, decoration by Charles Ricketts
(Vale Press, 1900) 

Distribution of the edition has been largely limited to the English-speaking world. Many copies of Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson remained in the country of production, which is little wonder: there are thirteen copies on paper and (at least) one on vellum in British libraries and museums.

However, most copies of this edition are in the United States where, based on online catalogues, as many as twenty-five copies can be counted. In addition, three copies are in Australian libraries and only one copy is kept in Irish libraries, which is also true of Canadian libraries.

Perhaps there are also copies in Asian, African or South American libraries, but I have not been able to ascertain that. Nor does the European continent abound in Vale Press editions. I have only found two copies of this edition in Dutch institutional collections, where there is a copy on paper (Leiden University Library) and a copy on vellum (National Library The Hague).

Prospectus for the Vale Press Tennyson edition (1900)

In all, only 46 copies of the edition of 320 copies have now been located.

There are Vale Press books in German, Belgian and French libraries (not this edition), but I have not yet discovered them in northern European libraries (Scandinavia) or southern European countries (Italy, Spain). 

Apparently, they were collected only in countries where the Private Press movement exerted some influence around 1900.

Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, initial by Charles Ricketts
(Vale Press, 1900) 

It is impossible to get a complete picture of the copies on private bookshelves. However, we can see where copies are for sale.

Four copies are currently offered online by antiquarian bookshops in Seattle (USA), Adelaide (Australia), Zurich (Switzerland) and Glasgow (Great Britain). 

655. The Programme for T.S. Moore's Aphrodite Against Artemis (1906)

Ricketts's yellow was the prevailing colour of the first performance of the Literary Stage Society - a group including Thomas Sturge Moore, Laurence Binyon, William Pye, R.C. Trevelyan, Ricketts & Shannon, Gwendolyn Bishop and Florence Farr. The play was by T.S. Moore, Aphrodite Against Artemis, and Ricketts was the designer.

'The scenery and costumes', according to the programme, 'have been carried out after designs by Mr. C.S. Ricketts as closely as circumstances permitted.' Sounds like a warning.

There were weak parts in the play, there was some 'atrocious acting', and the day after, a highly critical review offended the author.

Images of the rare programme, like the Salome programme in last week's blog, were kindly provided by Steven Halliwell.

Programme for T.S. Moore's Aphrodite Against Artemis (1906)

 

654. The Programme for Wilde's Salome (1906)

On 10 June 1906, a first performance of Oscar Wilde's play Salome took place at the King's Hall in London. The omens were not positive: some actresses refused to play the role, Wilde's name was still linked to scandal, funders were shy, costumes went missing, and newspapers returned their tickets for the first performance and refused to publish photos. But the audience - including W.B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, G.B. Shaw, Max Beerbohm, Eleanore Duse - responded enthusiastically, and Ricketts's stage designs 'surpassed belief'.

Charles Ricketts, stage design for Salome (1906)

Few copies of the printed programme have survived, as is often the case with ephemeral publications of this type. It is therefore with pleasure that we can publish the programme here in full. Collector Steven Halliwell provided the images below. Page 2 is blank - only pages 1 and 3-4 contain text.

Programme for Salome and A Florentine Tragedy, London, 10 June 1906

(With thanks to Steven Halliwell.)

653. Charles Shannon's Design of Pan Surrounded by Nymphs

One of Ricketts's and Shannon's most comprehensive projects in the early 1890s was an illustrated edition of the classic story of Daphnis and Chloe. Shannon had found an early English translation which they thought was much better than Amyot's French version and they decided to illustrate the story with wood-engravings and publish it themselves. However, halfway through - almost a year was needed just to cut the thirty-seven engravings - they agreed with Elkin Mathews and John Lane that The Bodley Head would distribute the book. 

Vignette for the colophon of Daphnis and Chloe (1893):
trial proof, signed 'C Ricketts'
[British Museum, 1913,0814.31]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

The wood-engravings were designed by Ricketts and Shannon, drawn on the wood by Ricketts, and engraved by both. Trial proofs of many of the illustrations exist, printed in black but also in ochre, red and reddish brown, and a large proportion of the separate prints were signed by Shannon or Ricketts (on these their signatures never appear together).

Although they had both become accustomed to signing their work - Ricketts's illustrations in magazines or Shannon's lithographs, for example - the wood-engravings in the book were not signed. However, there is remarkably a single exception.

Wood-engraving of Pan and nymphs for Daphnis and Chloe (1893)
Trial proof, signed 'Charles Shannon'
[British Museum, 1913,0814.17]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

In the book, on page 45, Shannon illustrated a scene in an orchard or wood, depicting Pan surrounded by nymphs. Each of them holds or has an apple. In the lower left hand corner Shannon engraved his initials 'CHS'.

Wood-engraving of Pan and nymphs for Daphnis and Chloe (1893)
Trial proof, signed 'Charles Shannon': detail
[British Museum, 1913,0814.17]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

But why does this wood-engraving bear Shannon's initials? Why were they not omitted as in the other illustrations? This authorship issue removes the uniformity of their collaboration. 

Why did Shannon want to claim precisely this illustration? We cannot assume that Ricketts disagreed with this representation and that it was therefore left to Shannon. Or is this one of the first blocks to be cut and does their decision to anonymise the illustrations - or rather see them as the work of both artists - date from later?

The initials could somehow have been removed or covered up at a later stage, but this was not done, even though work was done on the block after the trial proof was printed. 

Wood-engraving of Pan and nymphs for Daphnis and Chloe (1893)
Trial proof, signed 'Charles Shannon': detail
[British Museum, 1913,0814.17]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

The reclining nymph on the bottom right is wearing a dress with a fold that extends from her waist to the level of her knee in the trial proof. In the book, this black curve has been removed, creating a white space that is in line with the lightness of the other figures in the lower quarter of the image, in contrast to the darkness of the trees in the upper part.

Charles Shannon, wood-engraving of Pan and nymphs
in Daphnis and Chloe (1893): detail