untitled album
c 1913. 8vo, 7 3/8 x 5 1/2 in. (187 x 140 mm). Hand-made Florentine Album with 150 pp of hand-made laid paper, most pages with calligraphy in black ink with some pencil and ink drawings and decorations throughout. Limp vellum binding with yapp edges, elaborate TM monogram to upper cover; woodblock end paper with green motif; limp leather ties, one snapped and reattached.
This lovely hand-bound album contains a collection of hand-written poems and quotes, ranging from Browing to Shelley, with many religious considerations and transcriptions, collected by someone close to Dorothy Colles, possibly her mother or aunt. It is related, in its binding and style, to the Florentine album described in our inventory as no. 431.
Dorothy Margaret Tyas Colles (1917–2003), was an artist in oil, pastel and pencil, notable for portraits, mainly of children. She was born in Cairo, Egypt, where her father worked as a forensic scientist and medical school professor for the Egyptian government. When her father retired and returned to England she studied at the Westminster School of Art before World War II. Between 1940–45 she served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in the United Kingdom and the Middle East. After hostilities, she worked in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Society and for the Jordanian government before returning to London, after which she freelanced. Colles was a member of Pastel Society, also exhibiting at Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Royal Academy. She wrote and illustrated Portraying Children 1956, and in 1971 published Christian Symbols Ancient & Modern with Heather Child, the artist and calligrapher, who was a lifelong companion.
Item number: 432
Price: $650.00
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