Title: MAUCHLINE FERN WARE BINDING<<The Poetical ...
Publisher: London: T.Nelson & Sons. Paternoster Row
Publication Date: 1871
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: Illustrated Edition
Frontispiece, engraved title page, xix, 612 printed pages. 10 steel engraved plates with tissue guards. Extremely mild foxing. All edges gilt. Cream straight-grained textured endpapers with neat ink contemporary ownership signature on verso of frontispiece. Inner gilt dentelles. 17 x 11.5 cm. Spine in red morocco with six compartments with gilt decorated, raised bands, gilt heraldic tooling and lettering. Both upper and lower boards in original, nature-printed, Mauchline Fern ware, stencilled with a fern design on shellaced wood boards. Very little in the way of wear, or scratches. Mauchline Ware was a decorative technique that originated in the 1830s in the Scottish town of Mauchline in which a transfer print of a wood engraving, often a colour design (tartan or floral motif), was applied to a lacquered wooden object. The fern, unlike other plants, particularly lent itself to being used for stencil decoration. The fronds are instantly recognisable and Fern Ware was used to decorate trays, tea caddies, boxes and treen. Fern ware bindings mainly date from the 1870s, being an adaptation of Mauchline ware. In most cases actual ferns were used directly or indirectly, using three or four different processes in the manufacture. After the ferns were applied to the wooden surface it was then subjected to a dark brown stipple treatment before the removal of the ferns and subsequent varnishing. The method meant each design was unique and different from another and it was far less often used in book bindings than on other objects. Trachtenberg & Keith's reference text "Mauchline Ware", 2002, did not find an example to illustrate their reference guide with. This is a very pleasing example of a specialised binding. Bookseller Inventory # 4250