Morse's Designs for Art Amateur - Candy Dishes

While I did mention this design from Art Amateur in my book, I was not able to illustrate it. Here are Morse's designs for candy dishes from Art Amateur. 1897. Vol. 36, no.2. (Dubansky, page 39, note 52.)

Embroidery Design for Doilies, Another Design from Harper's Bazaar

Harper's Bazaar. October 17, 1896; 29, 42 (Proquest)



This is another one of several designs which Alice C. Morse created for embroideries, china painting and phyrography for Harper's Bazaar in the 1890s. Look closely and you can see her signature in the lower left corner of the design.  



Embroidery Designs in Harper's Bazaar

In addition to designing book covers, Alice C. Morse produced designs for pyrography, china and embroideries for several periodicals, including Art Amateur and the Art Interchange, Corticelli Home Needlework and Harper's Bazaar (see Dubansky pp. 13-14).  Here are two of her designs with Chrismas and plant motifs for Harper's Bazaar in 1896.

 

From Harper's Bazaar; November 21, 1896. This periodical is available on Proquest.

A Book Plate Design at the Cooper Hewitt Museum - 1895

This bookplate design by Alice C. Morse, dated 1895, is in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum. (Accession number 2009-6-58). The media is pencil and ink on paper, with white paint used as a correction aid. It is the only known bookplate design by Morse, although she may have designed others. It is signed in the lower left corner of the design.

As with Morse's other original designs at Cooper Hewitt, this drawing gives us insight into Morse's process. Her underlying pencil sketch, areas where Morse used white paint to modify her drawing, and notes on size (2 1/2 x 2 3/4 in.) are evident. She obviously wanted this design returned to her, but we don't know to whom it may have been commissioned from or sent to on spec. The verso image has been color-corrected (or uncorrected) to show you more detail. The board is quite brittle and yellowed. The drawing paper is still white and in good condition. Perhaps one of us will one day find this bookplate in printed form in a book. If anyone does find one, please let me know, as it is now known if the plate was ever printed and used.

Three Men in a Boat. A Published Design Firmly Attributed to Morse

If you are collecting Morse covers you will be happy to know about this cover on a poplular text from the late 19th century. Gullans and Espy attributed a binding for Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1890) to Morse, but I was never quite sure if this was the cover because it seemed at the time, so unlike Morse's work, especially her early work -- which this is.

I was wrong, as this image in The American Bookmaker clearly attributes this design to Morse (May 1890, p. 127). The  pictorial design that Morse made for this book is not quite so successful on the published binding as it appears here. It is stamped in green on blue cloth. The stamping color is simlar in tone to the cloth color, making the detailed design difficult to decipher.  Not in Dubansky.

My copy of Three Men in a Boat



 

Two Years in the French West Indies: An Alternate Design?

Drawing. Book-Cover Design by Alice C. Morse
Cooper Hewitt Museum.
Accession number 1943-33-1-7

 

 

This draiwing in the Cooper Hewitt Museum could be an alternate design study for Lafcadio Hearn's Two Years in the French West Indies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890; Dubansky entry 90-3). See Two Years in the French West Indies book cover in The Metropolitan Museum of Art website for an image of Morse's own cover. This design shares some of the same features as the published version, such as the strapwork design, the orange bough motifs and the color palette.

Possible Alternate Design for "In Blue Uniform" 1893

Putnam, George I. In Blue Uniform: An Army Novel.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893.



Design for a Book Cover. Drawing.  Alice C. Morse, Designer.
Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.4 cm.
Cooper Hewitt Museum. Accession number 1943-33-1-12.  

In keeping with my effort to compare Morse's original drawings for book covers with known published Morse book covers, I pose that the drawing above may have been an alternate design for In Blue Uniform, a design origianlly attributed to Morse by Gullans and Espy. Dubansky entry 93-5.