Morse's Stained Glass Windows at the Larchmont Yacht Club - 1897



Slowly but steadily, more information about Alice C. Morse's career as a stained-glass designer is being revealed. Browsing through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's online resources I found mention of windows I had never heard of before -- this article about a suite of stained-glass windows that Morse designed for the Larchmont Yacht Club's Women's Room, in 1897. A query has been made to determine if the windows still exist and I have been told that they do, so hopefully you will soon see actual photographs of the windows.

From the picture below, you can form an idea of what Morse's garland design windows might look like. Since the type is so small, I've transcribed the part of the article that describes the windows below.  

New-York Tribune, June 5, 1897, pg. 5

Windows Designed by a Woman. Some Gifts to the Larchmont Yacht Club- New Decorations in the Women’s Room

The women’s room in the Larchmont Yacht Club, through the generosity of one of its members, is being transformed into one of the most charming rooms of this artistic clubhouse. … The same club member has also put in four opalescent glass windows to add to the decoration of the room. These lights consist of three transoms over the main window and a transom over the door. They are the work of Miss Alice Morse, who has added to her distinction in the book-cover field a reputation for thoroughly artistic work in several lines of decoration-notably stained glass, embroideries and zinc etching.

Miss Morse spent four years designing for stained glass in the Tiffany Glass Company, and as a result has a thorough grasp of the practical necessities as well as the artistic possibilities of this art. There are several examples of her work in and about New-York. She not only makes the preliminary sketch herself, but she also executes the working, drawing and choosing every piece of glass.

The general color scheme of the above-mentioned window is a warm one, the background being of a purplish hue, with green opal tints. The jewels in the garlands are amber and are what tare technically known as “broken” jewels, as are also the green jewels in the border.

There is a touch here and there of strong blue, to accent the opalescent effect of the whole. Miss Morse’s color sense is sure and her work graceful in line, and well thought out. We give illustrations of the mantel and three of the windows-two of the group of three window transoms-and the door transom.  



A Puritan's Wife - Everything Now Makes Sense

Max Pemberton

A Puritan's Wife

New York: Dodd Mead & Co., 1896

Printer: University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

Signed AM, under the blossom below the title on the front cover

Dimensions: 18.2 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm.



The binding for A Purtian's Wife (Dubansky entry 01-1), never made sense to me. I found two adaptations, but never the original cover. Recently, Richard Minsky sent me a photograph of it, but thankfully, I've just found a copy for my Morse collection. For more information see the previous post on this title.

Bound in golden-tan linen finish plain-weave cloth, possibly a reverse cloth. It is stamped in olive green and a dull red, with gold lettering. The endleaves are plain off-white laid paper. Top edge gilt, foredge and tail are untrimmed.

Morse's Window for Carnegie Hall

Notation on recto: Over Main Entrance - Music Hall (5 of these)
Cooper-Hewiit Museum, accession number 2009-6-2

As mentioned earlier in this blog, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum posesses a substantial collecton of original designs for book covers and stained glass windows by Alice C. Morse. As you may already know from reading this blog or my book, Morse was a stained glass designer before she designed book covers and she was one of the original 'Tiffany Girls', working for the Tiffany Glass Company from 1885-1889. From the addresses on the versos of the designs, it appears that Morse continued designing windows after leaving Tiffany. Morse felt that stained glass and book-cover design presented similar challenges and were akin to each other from a design standpoint.

Alice C. Morse originally donated these drawings in 1943 to the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration. Among the stained glass designs are eight drawings of windows commissioned for Carnegie Hall, or the Music Hall, as it was origianlly named. Morse's notations on the drawings indicate the location and quantity for each window as well as her name and address, which assist us in dating the designs. To my knowledge, these designs have not been published, but they should be available through the Cooper-Hewitt website -- if not now, at some point. While they have not been published, Jacquellann Killian of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum has conducted original research on Morse's window designs and has presented a paper entitled The Stained Glass Designs of Alice Cordelia Morse.

Found, Yet Lost - An Adaptation of the Design from the Portia Series




E. P. Roe. Found, Yet Lost. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, n.d.

This adaptation of Alice C. Morse's design has recently been identified on the front cover of Found, Yet Lost . The original use of this plate was on the Portia Series, a five-volume series of self-help books for women, published by Dodd, Mead in 1891-1892 . Even within the Portia Series, several variants of Mores's design were used.  A detailed description of the binding variants for Dodd Mead's Portia Series can be read in The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse, entry 91-2, p. 54.

"House and Hearth" Design Re-used

Recently, I found two books with Morse's designs re-used on books published by Dodd Mead. Both of them were authored by E. P. Roe. The one shown below is A Brave Little Quakeress (1892), featuring a design originally created for House and Hearth (1891). The picture below is Alice Morse's exhibition cover that is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Deptarment of Drawings and Prints). To read more about Morse's book covers in on The Metropolitan Museum website, click here. The other book will be the subject of another post. This design is described in entry 91-3, Dubansky book.

Book cover for House and Hearth, 1891
Designer: Alice C. Morse (American, 1863–1961); author: Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (American, 1835–1921); publisher: Dodd, Mead & Company, New York
Beige cloth covered boards with light and dark brown and gold decoration

Overall 6 3/8 x 9 3/16 in. (16.2 x 23.4 cm), front cover 6 3/8 x 4 in. (16.2 x 10.1 cm), front cover and spine 6 3/8 x 5 1/4 in. (16.2 x 13.4 cm)
Gift of Alice C. Morse, 1923, transferred from the Library (56.522.50)

Here is the adaptation of Morse's design on A Brave Little Quakeress, by E. P. Roe, Dodd Mead, 1892. The color in this Ebay photograph is off. A more acurate photo may be forthcoming. The cloth is gold and the stamping orange-red. This design adaptation is not in the Dubansky book.

R. L. Stevenson's, Island Nights Entertainments - A Possible Morse Design

Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Island Night's Entertainments. 

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893

Awhile back, Christina Kraus sent a picture of this unsigned book cover, thinking it might be by Alice C. Morse. It looks compatible with Morse's work but I haven't found any proof of its designer as yet. Morse did design the cover of Stevenson's  The Wrecker for  Scribner's, published in 1892. (See Dubansky entry 92-13.)

Christine of the Hills

Richard Minsky and John Lehner identified this cover as a Morse design and it certainly looks like one. It is signed in the lower right corner of the front cover illustration, but the monogram is not typical of Morse as it is missing the crossbar in the 'A'. This could just be artistic licence. The more pictorial covers we find of Morse's, the more we have a sense of her pictorial style -- and that list is growing. As Morse worked in so many styles (grotesque, art nouveau, arts and crafts, classical, etc.) it can be a challenge to identify her work if it is not signed -- and pretty much everything before 1894 is not signed. (Morse was designing book covers since 1887). I have not yet looked for a published reference that would verify that Morse designed Christine of the Hills. I plan to, but if you find anything, let me know.



Max Pemberton
Christine of the Hills
New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1897
University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Signed
181 x 127 x 27 mm
Photo Credit: Richard Minsky

A Singer of the Sea - A Variant of a Cover Used on Paul Dunbar's Lyrics of Love and Laughter

Those of you familiar with Alice C. Morse will recongnize this pretty design from its appearance on two other titles in The Proper Decoration of Book Covers:

 My Lady's Slipper by Dora Sigerson (Dubansky entry 99-4).
Lyrics of Love and Laughter by Paul Dunbar (Dubansky entry 03-1)

Thanks to Valinda Carroll for discovering it.

And the variants just keep on coming and characteristically deteriorate in quality. 

Amelia E. Barr

A Singer From the Sea

New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

copyright 1893; no date on book

160 x 107 x 27 mm

Signed

A Rose of a Hundred Leaves - Another Variant

Entry 91-1 in The Proper Decoration of Book Covers is Alice C. Morse's beautiful book cover design for A Rose of a Hundred Leaves. It is a lovely design depicting a wreath of pink roses gold-stamped on a white paper onlay. Another, smaller variant, much reduced in quality is also displayed. Today, I found yet a third variant with the same design, further simplified, but with a dust jacket. It isn't a newly discovered design, but it does illustrate how publishers continued to reinvent and reproduce cover designs, in smaller sizes for books in series.   

Amelia Huddleston Barr

A Rose of a Hundred Leaves: A Love Story

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1891

Unsigned

Buy a copy of The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse

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