Album of sketches: PD.58-1998

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Album of sketches

Maker(s)

Entities

Album

Description

Eighty drawings. Binding of pigskin and oak boards. As John Christian has pointed out, the pigskin spine and oak boards of the binding recall the 48 deluxe copies of the Kelmscott Chaucer, published in 1896. They were bound in full white pigskin over oak boards by the Doves Bindery set up near Morris's house in Hammersmith by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson in 1893. PD.58-1998.f.71 is blank and therefore not recorded elsewhere.

Notes

History note: Possibly Aglaia Coronio (née Ionides); Christie's 7 June 1996, lot 557; Christie's 24 November 1998, lot 169

Legal notes

With a contribution from the M.G.C. / V. and A. Purchase Grant Fund.

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bought (1998) by Christie's

Note

John Christian has suggested that this album may have been compiled by Aglaia Coronio, a close friend of Morris, or by one of her relations, possibly her daughter alliope. Her brother Luke Ioniedes, recalls in his privately-published 'Memoirs' that he had, 'a set of [Burne-Jones] caricatures of [Morris] doing catherine wheels in Cavendish Square, and another at the Turkish Bath, where we had gone together' (1925; 1996 ed. p. 21). Further sheets in the album support the Ioniedes/Coronio provenance. The sketches of dresses and accesories may have been designed to help Aglaia make studio properties. One of the sheets is inscribed with Mrs Coronio's name; another bears the letterhead of '1 Holland Park', the home of her brother, Alexander Ionides; Aglaia lived next door at no. 1A.