Small collections of Vale Press books in northern Europe mostly emerged after the death of William Morris, while new museums for applied art were established under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement. A collection in Sweden grew under the influence of the printer Waldemar Zachrisson, see blog 657. A similar core collection was established in Hamburg by Justus Brinckmann and his assistant Richard Stettiner. In Denmark, books and many other objects were collected by the Kunstindustrimuseet which is now the Designmuseum Danmark.
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| Vale Press books Designmuseum Danmark [Photo: Sara Fruelund] |
The collection comprises nine Vale Press editions. There is also a single edition illustrated by Ricketts and Shannon, Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates. The books were obtained over a long period of time, but the nucleus was gathered in the 1890s.
One of the first books that was acquired was a pre Vale book, Daphnis and Chloe (1893). It was bought at Hacon & Ricketts in May 1898 for £2 12s. The original price had been £2 2s.
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| Daphnis and Chloe (1893) Designmuseum Danmark: II464 [Photo: Sara Fruelund] |
The other early acquisition was Lucien Pissarro and Charles Ricketts's De la typographie et de l'harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers (1898) which was bought in May 1898 at H. Floury (Paris), who is mentioned on the title page as the French co-publisher, and had received fifty copies of this book at the beginning of April.
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| Charles Ricketts, Lucien Pissarro, De la typographie et de l'harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers (1898) Designmuseum Danmark: I703 [Photo: Sara Fruelund] |
Founded in 1890, and opened to the public in 1894, the Danish Museum for Art and Design (Kunstindustrimuseet) amassed a collection of porcelain, faience, silver, furniture, glass and textiles that was exhibited in several galleries. In 1898, the secretary Charles Arnold Been (1869-1914) travelled to London to acquire material for exhibitions. Been had not finished his university education (History), and in 1893 joined the museum for which he undertook some travelling.
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| Letter from Ch. A. Been, 29 December 1898 Designmuseum Danmark [Photo: Sara Fruelund] |
In a letter, dated 9 December 1898, Been reported back to the museum about his finds, mentioning the names of Ashbee, Nicholson, and Hacon and Ricketts. His purpose was to collect English illustrations, books and posters for an exhibition that was opened the following year. From 7 February to 12 March 1899 works by Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, William Nicholson, Lucien Pissarro, Robert Anning Bell, and Dudley Hardy were exhibited. (There is no catalogue, but these names are mentioned in a review.)
Ricketts's name is not mentioned, but several of his books were on display. These (or a selection of them) were acquired by the museum after the exhibition closed. In May 1899, four books were not returned to Hacon and Ricketts, but added to the museum's collection:
Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna (1896): 8s 5;
Apuleius, The Excellent Narration of the Marriage of Cupide and Psyches (1897): £1;
The Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney (1898): 16s 10;
Michael Field, The World at Auction (1898): 12s.
Then, in December 1900, the museum acquired the second pre-Vale publication Hero and Leander (1894). It was bought from no other than Been himself, who had apparently also bought books for himself, but now decided to add his copy to the museum's collection. He was paid 25 Danish Kroner for it.
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| Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891) Illustrated na designed by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, Lucien Pissarro, Designmuseum Danmark: I1254 [Photo: Sara Fruelund] |
A few years later, in November 1903, two more Vale Press books were acquired - along with books from The Eragny Press and the Essex House Press. These were bought from the German firm Breslauer & Meyer, founded in April 1898 by Edmund Meyer and Martin Breslauer. The first one was Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates (1891) which cost 40 Mark, the second one was Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1903), priced at 27 Mark.
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| Accession Protocol 1899 Designmuseum Danmark [Photo: Sara Fruelund] |
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| Accession Protocol 1899 (detail) Designmuseum Danmark [Photo: Sara Fruelund] |
Between these two titles featured The Parables, illustrated by Millais, one of the Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces of the 1860s, showing that the museum's interest in the English book was broader than just the modern 1890s.
