Arms of the See of Worcester

Albert Henry Warren and John Woodward

1868

18.6 x 14 cm.

Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 64

Source: Arms of the Episcopates of Great Britain and Ireland

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With thanks to the Center for Digital Scholarship and Digital Production Services in the Brown University Library for producing the color image used in this web version.

Albert Henry Warren was one of the most prolific designers of signed publishers' bindings in the nineteenth century. As an apprentice to Owen Jones he represents the next generation of artists of the book (Ball, 92). [continued below]

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Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith

His decision to create Arms of the Episcopates of Great Britain and Ireland, printed in red and black Gothic types with chromohthographed plates, reflects his understanding of the Victorian taste for illumination, heraldry, medieval decorative arts, and church history. The regions which a bishop rules are called his see or episcopate, and during the thirteenth century these regions began to acquire coats of arms. The history and significance of episcopal shields became a means for Warren and his co-author Woodward to trace the ecclesiastical history of Britain from the thirteenth century to their own time. Woodward wrote the heraldic notes; Warren drew and printed the plates, and described them in the language of heraldry.

Warren proved his abilities as a chromolithographcr in these forty-eight plates, printed in at least eight colors, which he tipped into black- and red-ruled borders. His design for the "See of Worchester" illustrates the essential elements of episcopal arms, a shield surmounted by a bishop's mitre. All of the surrounding ornament is Warren's own invention, blending pen flourishes and Gothic Revival tracery. Golden tracery, filled in with scarlet and light green, serves as a frame for gray and white pen flourishes probably derived from Owen Jones's chromolithographed illumination in books such as The Song of Songs (cat. 4). Warren's binding with a central gold-stamped mandorla set in rectangular frames also echoes Jones's The Song of Songs; Warren's less sculpturally vigorous cover was done in maroon or blue cloth, while Jones used stamped leather. Warren was proud enough of his book to send an autographed copy of it, now in the Metzdorf Collection at Princeton University, to Mrs. William Bell Scott, wife of the Gothic Revival architect, in 1868.

References

Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.

Warren, Albert Henry, and Rev. John Woodward. Arms of the Episcopates of Great Britain and Ireland. London: N.P.: Chiswick Press, 1868. Printer: Whitringham & Wilkins. Binder: W. Bone & Son.

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Last modified 25 December 2013