Nov 24, 2015 - Sale 2400

Sale 2400 - Lot 188

Price Realized: $ 1,430
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(MASON, STUART.) Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 44 decorated initials, elaborate half-title and border decoration, Chiswick Press stamp on colophon, all hand-colored by stuart mason, the colophon signed "Stuart Mason Pinxit Nov. 1908" and Chiswick stamp initialed by him as well. Small 8vo, art binding of plum morocco with intertwining border design in gold and green on covers, by Andrée M. Clarke; custom felt-lined clamshell box by Clarke (leather spine faded); her raised stamp on half-title. London: George Bell and Sons, 1900

Additional Details

a unique and curious copy inscribed in latin, signed, and illuminated by stuart mason (christopher millard) for charles scott montcrieff for Christmas, 1908. Bound in are two watercolor and pencil drawings, perhaps by Mason, but signature not clear. Mason, known as Christopher Sclater Millard, wrote the first major bibliography on Oscar Wilde and was himself jailed for "gross indecency" in 1906. Upon his release two years later, and the date of this inscription, he met Charles Scott Montcrieff, then a pupil at Winchester College but who later became a major translator of Proust, and was the person to whom Mason dedicated his bibliography of Wilde. The binder, Andrée M. Clarke, was born in the Tonkin region of French Indochina. She lived in France and in New York City where she studied French relieure under master bookbinders Catherine Stanescu and Deborah Evetts.