That House in Bloomsbury
Designer Alice Cordelia Morse American
Author Margaret Oliphant British, Scottish
Publisher Dodd, Mead & Co.
Not on view
A leading New York book-cover designer in the late nineteenth century, Morse studied at the Woman’s Art School of the Cooper Union, then under John La Farge before working for Louis C. Tiffany as a painter and designer of stained glass. In 1887 she began to concentrate on book-covers, fufilling eighty-three commissions for New York commercial publishers by 1905. Complementing the text, she chose imagery ranging from classical, to Renaissance, Celtic, Arabic, Gothic, Rococo, Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau. This symmetrical Arts and Crafts design is bound in light gold diagonal-rib reversed cloth with ivy leaves stamped in brown and the title in gold. This example must be a publisher's proof, since published copies are always bound in dark tan.
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