PBA Galleries

With Descriptions by Sir Frederic Madden. [2], 18 pp. With lithographed hand-colored title, printed title & 59 lithographed plates by Shaw, all hand-finished and illuminated in colors, several plates illuminated in gilt, first four leaves embellished with gold leaf; letterpress descriptions interleaved throughout (including leaf with Addendum to Specimen VIII); tissue guards. (Folio) 37.5x27.5 cm. (14¾x10¾"), modern three-quarter red morocco and marbled boards, spine gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. First Edition.

Marvelous series of hand-illuminated plates recording ornaments and decorations from the middle ages to the renaissance; quite scarce in all editions, especially so in the large paper edition, only a small number of copies were produced. Ruari McLean comments: “the key drawings by Shaw are printed from etched (often stone etched) or lithographed plates (the same illustration occurs in both etched and lithographed versions, for no apparent reason) and the colours painted in by hand. In the large paper copies (‘more highly finished in opaque colours, heightened with gold’) one can only say that the results are hardly less beautiful than the mediaeval originals; they are hand illuminated with the utmost skill, and the gold used is gold leaf.” (Victorian book design, p. 65).