THE WORKS OF ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, POET LAUREATE

London: Macmillan and Co, 1900. 190 x 125 mm. (7 1/2 x 5"). viii, 900, [2] pp., [1] leaf (ads).
A VERY CHARMING LIGHT GREEN "VELLUCENT" BINDING BY CEDRIC CHIVERS (stamp-signed on rear turn-in), COVERS AND SPINE WITH BEAUTIFULLY EXECUTED ART NOUVEAU PEN-AND-INK WATERCOLOR DESIGN BY DOROTHY CARLETON SMYTH, upper cover showing King Arthur kneeling in in royal robes, the sword Excalibur held in front of him, a small dragon (symbolizing his surname, "Pendragon") sitting beside it, and multi-colored long-stemmed lilies and other blossoms in the background, rear cover showing Queen Guinevere kneeling to face her husband, her hands resting on a book of hours, a thorny branch of colorful flowers and foliage arching over her, smooth spine with white rectangle bearing gilt title, a lily stalk entwined with flowering vine below it, gilt-ruled turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. With a frontispiece portrait of the author. Front pastedown with engraved armorial bookplate of Michael, Earl of Rosse. For the binding: Tidcombe, "Women Bookbinders 1880-1920," pl. 11. Two small brown spots near head of front board, boards tending to splay slightly (as virtually always with a vellum binding like this), endpapers a bit foxed, other trivial imperfections, but AN EXTREMELY PLEASING COPY despite its defects, the text and lovely binding with few signs of use.

This collection of Tennyson's verse, including his Arthurian "Idylls of the King," is aptly bound in one of Cedric Chivers' luminous "vellucent bindings" designed by Scottish artist Dorothy Carleton Smyth, one of five women who worked on the design, coloring, and illumination of this Chivers specialty. According to Tidcombe, "most Vellucent bindings were designed by H. Granville Fell, but the woman most frequently employed for this kind of work was probably Dorothy Carleton Smyth." The binding here is enormously attractive: its overall quiet pastel is punctuated by flowers with brilliantly stippled stamens encircling the central figures of Arthur on the front cover, straight-backed and thrusting his long sword into the ground, and Guinevere, 35 years his junior, kneeling at her prie-dieu on the back cover, her hair cascading nearly to her knees. It is all precise and elegant and pretty. Smyth (1880-1933) studied with Walter Crane at the Manchester School of Art before attending the Glasgow School of Art, where she concentrated on costume design, although she "became accomplished in a number of mediums," according to the GSA Archives. The design here is typical of the Art Nouveau style pioneered by the Glasgow School, with elongated figures, sinuous lines, and stylized floral decoration. Smyth returned to the Glasgow school as a teacher in 1914, and became head of the commercial art department in 1927. She had just been selected as the school's first woman director in 1933, but died before she could succeed to the post. Cedric Chivers (1853-1929) established binding premises in his native Bath after an inspiring visit to the Paris Exhibition of 1878, and a short time later, after hearing a lecture by Cyril Davenport on the 18th century painted vellum bindings of Edwards of Halifax, he began producing his own work in this tradition, creating what he called the "vellucent" binding. The innovative part of these bindings, as seen here, was accomplished by rendering vellum transparent, then placing it over painted pieces of paper, thereby protecting the surface of the paper from soiling and abrasion. Prideaux says that the process achieves the effect of enriched enamel. Former owner Michael Parsons, Earl of Rosse (1906-79), was an Anglo-Irish peer and a Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Society of Antiquaries..