California and Alaska and Over the Canadian Pacific Railway
Cover designed by Alice Cordelia Morse American
Author William Seward Webb American
Publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York American
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 example is dark brown full morocco with gold and blind-stamping in the style of a sixteenth-century fanfare binding, and was produced for a deluxe gift book limited to 500 copies each costing $25, a high price in 1890.
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