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.

Polly

 

The Book Buyer (Vol. 11, February 1894-January 1895, p. 561) credits Alice C. Morse with the design of this cover for Polly: A Christmas Recollection (Scribners, 1894).  Polly is one of a four-title set of books by Thomas Nelson Page. The first title in the set is Marse Chan, published in 1892. It is also unsigned but attributed to Morse. Morse's own book-cover for Marse Chan is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Accession number 56.522.79; See Dubansky entry 92-12.)
To see the Museum's Marse Chan, click on:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/385894

The other titles in this set are Meh Lady (1894) and Unc' Edinburgh (1895). These have not been attributed to Morse.

A Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Newly Attributed Design by Morse?

There are numerous book cover designs for A Bow of Orange Ribbon by Amelia Barr in the 1890s and Morse may have designed one or more of them. Although this cover is not signed, I always thought that Morse may have designed it. This is only one of the many variants I have seen it in. Upon browsing my notes from the Cooper Hewitt Morse collection, I notitced this small sketch on the back of  another design. Could it be an early sketch for this pubhsiled design. It certainly looks like it. Note the crossed swords, the rough bow design and the type layout.

Examples of Morse's Cloth Specifications

In an interview with Gilson Willets entitled "The Designing of Book-Covers" (Art Interchange, November 1894, pp. 118-119) Morse describes that she presented her publishers with two or three rough sketches. Once the publsher had chosen a design, Morse prepared a finished colored drawing, specifying the colors of the design and book cloth. Two of Morse's drawings for book covers at the Cooper Hewitt Museum feature cloth specifications on the versos. They are for cloths made by the Bancroft and Holliston Mills.