Tag Archives: Owen Jones

Book of the Week – Gray’s Elegy

29 Monday Sep 2014

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Gray’s Elegy
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
London, New York: Longman. Wiley and Putnam, 1846
First edition
PR3502 E5 1846

Illuminated by Owen Jones in his characteristic spidery style, this is one of the earliest examples of chromolithography, a method of book illustration that Jones was instrumental in popularizing. Owen Jones was an English architect and designer. His work on the interior of the Crystal Palace and for the Great Exhibition of 1851 brought his name as an interior designer into prominence. This is the first book issued in a kind of binding heretofore generally reserved for illuminated books – deeply embossed to imitate carved wood. The embossing was built up underneath the leather as well as from the top.

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Book of the Week – Scenes from the Winter’s Tale

16 Monday Dec 2013

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Scenes from the Winter’s Tale
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
London: Day and Son, 1866
PR2883 S28 1866

This is the first edition of this pictorial retelling of Shakespeare’s stylized play set in ancient Greece. Both text and illustration were designed as a single entity by Owen Jones, united by the use of one color scheme and type of ornament on each two-page spread. The decorative motifs used are derived from historical styles illustrated in Jones’ The Grammar of Ornament. This book is illustrated with forty-eight chromolithographs, illuminated by Owen Jones over figures by Henry Warren. Jones and Warren began their collaboration in 1841 with Ancient Spanish Ballads (1841). The books they worked on together provide an integration of ornament, drawn text, and illustrated figure unique in the history of printing.

Text and facing illustrations are set in broad decorative borders. Bound in publisher’s brown cloth. Front cover is blocked in gold, with elaborate borders in red and purple and central gilt illustration of a flowering plant; the same decoration is repeated in blind on the back cover. Title is gilt on spine, with added decoration. All edges gilt.

Shakespeare is coming! The First Folio will arrive at the City Library in October.