Details
BURNE-JONES, Sir EDWARD. [KELMSCOTT PRESS and WILLIAM MORRIS]. Seventeen proofs of illustrations comprising: 14 sheets (including variants and a rejected subject) for 7 illustrations to The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896) and 3 sheets for one unpublished illustration for Cupid and Psyche (1868, blocks printed after April 1891). All but one are platinotype (photographic) reproductions of Burne-Jones's drawings by Emery Walker's process-engraving firm (one, for Cupid and Psyche, is an original wood engraving), two sheets are heightened with black brushwork over the lines and with washes of Chinese white by Robert Catterson-Smith. 180 x 235mm. (7 1/8 x 9 3/8in.) approximately and smaller, each tipped to larger white card mounts, loose in a boards Elliott & Fry portfolio (rebacked), with the Kelmscott Press book label of Edward Burne-Jones, quarter morocco box case.
"For the Chaucer and some of the other Kelmscott books illustrated by Burne-Jones, Morris also found it necessary to enlist the talents of Robert Catterson-Smith....Walker's process-engraving firm photographed Burne-Jones's drawings and made two very pale photographic prints ('platinos') of each of them. Catterson-Smith mounted one of the prints on a piece of cardboard and covered it with a slight wash of Chinese white, so that the drawing was barely visible. He then drew over Burne-Jones's lines with a brush [in jet black]; before this revised drawing was transferred photographically to the surface of the woodblock and engraved by Hooper, Burne-Jones and Catterson-Smith discussed it at length."--William S. Peterson, A Bibliography of the Kelmscott Press (Oxford 1984), p. xxix.
"For the Chaucer and some of the other Kelmscott books illustrated by Burne-Jones, Morris also found it necessary to enlist the talents of Robert Catterson-Smith....Walker's process-engraving firm photographed Burne-Jones's drawings and made two very pale photographic prints ('platinos') of each of them. Catterson-Smith mounted one of the prints on a piece of cardboard and covered it with a slight wash of Chinese white, so that the drawing was barely visible. He then drew over Burne-Jones's lines with a brush [in jet black]; before this revised drawing was transferred photographically to the surface of the woodblock and engraved by Hooper, Burne-Jones and Catterson-Smith discussed it at length."--William S. Peterson, A Bibliography of the Kelmscott Press (Oxford 1984), p. xxix.