Beautiful Hand-Painted Art Nouveau Vellucent Binding
Binding Stamp-Signed by Cedric Chivers
An exquisite vellucent binding from the workshop of Cedric Chivers of Bath, with orginal watercolor decorations on both front and back cover, as well as the spine. The paintings on the covers are "King Arthur Pendragon" and "Guinevere His Queen" and were made by one of the female staff artists in Chivers's Bath bindery. The binding is entirely appropriate to the book as the text includes Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate of England in 1850 and became the Baron of Aldworth and Farrington in 1883.
Cedric Chivers was inspired by James Edwards of Halifax, who had patented a technique for painted vellum bindings in 1785. In Chivers' adaptation of the method hand-painted paper panels were covered with translucent vellum, creating what Chivers styled as "vellucent" bindings. He employed as many as forty women in his bindery, but only a few highly skilled artists did the painting work: Dorothy Carleton Smyth, Alice Shepherd, Miss J.D. Dunn, Muriel Taylor, and Agatha Gales.
Dorothy Carleton Smyth, who designed most of Chivers' vellucent bindings, almost certainly crafted this particular piece. The binding is described and illustrated in Marianne Tidcombe's Women Bookbinders 1880-1920, page 38.
Front cover depicts King Arthur kneeling in his royal robes, wielding the sword Excalibur, with two small dragons (representing Arthur's surname "Pendragon"), one near the tip of the sword, and the other hovering above; colorful long-stemmed lilies and other blossoms complete the scene. The rear cover shows Queen Guinevere kneeling toward her husband, her sinewy hands resting on a large book of hours, as a beautifully detailed thorny branch of colorful blossoms arches over her. Many of the flowers are decorated with tiny stipple-like gilt ringlets the size of a pinhole. Spine title in gilt within a white rectangle. Finely detailed long-stemmed lily and other flowers below it, gilt-ruled turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.
Dorothy Carleton Smyth
Scottish-born artist Dorothy Carleton Smyth was recognized for her vellucent bindings, a unique form of bookbinding that involved making vellum transparent and overlaying it on painted paper to protect the art beneath. Born in 1880, Smyth trained under Walter Crane at the Manchester School of Art before honing her skills at the Glasgow School of Art, focusing on costume design and mastering various artistic mediums. Her work primarily featured the Art Nouveau style, characterized by elongated figures, flowing lines, and fine floral motifs. Smyth was one of the relatively few women, and the most frequent female collaborator, in designing these ornate bindings for Cedric Chivers, who innovated the technique after being inspired by historical vellum bindings. Her contributions to the Glasgow School extended beyond her artistic work; she returned as a faculty member, later led the commercial art department, and was appointed the school's first female director in 1933, although she died before assuming the role.
A beautiful example of a vellucent binding in fine condition.