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.

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.  



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.

Design in Poker-Work, A Footstool

Now that so many American periodicals are online, it's much easier to find Morse designs than it was when I was working on my book. This dynamic design, by Alice C. Morse, appeared in Harper's Bazaar on April 24, 1897 on page 348. It is included in the Proquest database. The design is for a pyrography footstool.

A Venetian June

 Here is a lovely grotesque book cover design by Morse that is not in my book, but was discovered in time for the Grolier Club exhibition. As you can see, it is signed AM under the author's name, within the curly leaves of the lower part of the design.

Below is a review of the design in The Bookman, Volume 4. The review also attributes Morse as a designer for some of the volumes in Century's 'Thumbnail Series' and for the singular, classical design of Harper's 'Odd Number Series' and includes a picture of A Venetian June. While we now know that Morse designed at least two of the books for The Thumbnail series (Writing to Rosina and Tracings [see Tracings in an earlier posting), it still remains for me to locate the rest of the books in the series and see which can be attributed to Morse.

A review of A Venetian June from The Bookman, 1896

Anna Fuller
A Venetian June
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1896
Printer: The Knickerbocker Press
155 x 110 x 20 mm
Signed

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