That House in Bloomsbury

Alice Cordelia Morse|Margaret Oliphant|Dodd, Mead & Co.

1896 · Tan cloth covered boards with black and gold decoration · Drawings and Prints

A leading New York book-cover designer in the late nineteenth century, Morse studied at the Woman’s Art School of the Cooper Union, then under John La Farge before working for Louis C. Tiffany as a painter and designer of stained glass. In 1887 she began to concentrate on book-covers, fufilling eighty-three commissions for New York commercial publishers by 1905. Complementing the text, she chose imagery ranging from classical, to Renaissance, Celtic, Arabic, Gothic, Rococo, Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau. This symmetrical Arts and Crafts design is bound in light gold diagonal-rib reversed cloth with ivy leaves stamped in brown and the title in gold. This example must be a publisher's proof, since published copies are always bound in dark tan.

Artist

Alice Cordelia Morse|Margaret Oliphant|Dodd, Mead & Co.

Date

1896

Medium

Tan cloth covered boards with black and gold decoration

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Alice C. Morse, 1923, transferred from the Library