- Museum number
- 1962,0809.2.1
- Description
-
Design for pendant jewel of metalwork embellished with jewels; central circular section set with four garnets and a mother-of-pearl lozenge, with enamelled vine leaves, one forming the base from which a pear-shaped jewel hangs, crowned with Silenus mask flanked by two pearls, to which is attached a link in the form of twined rings for suspension. c.1901
Watercolour touched with white, and pen and ink over graphite, touched with gold
- Production date
- 1901 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 103 millimetres (drawing, irregular)
-
Width: 49 millimetres (drawing, irregular)
- Curator's comments
- This was the first design for the front of a jewel made to house a miniature of the poet Edith Emma Cooper commissioned in 1901 (now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). The subject of Pegasus drinking from the fountain of Hippocrene, designs for which can also be seen in this album (1962.0809,2.14 and15), was finally chosen for the finished object. The twinned rings forming the link at the top of the design serves as an emblem for Cooper and her aunt Katherine Bradley, who wrote together under the pseudonym Michael Field.
See C. Gere and G. C. Munn, 'Artist's Jewellery: Pre-Raphaelite to Arts and Crafts', London 1898, p.152, pl.103 and D. Scarisbrick, 'Charles Ricketts and his designs for Jewellery', 'Apollo', Sept 1982, pp.166 (fig.3) and 167.
The drawing is in an album bound in cloth with a label on the front inscribed "Designs for Jewels/done at Richmond/C[harles] Ricketts", and a manufacturer's label on the back endpaper (Winsor & Newton Ltd), containing 26 leaves (213 x 307mm) with drawings executed between 1899 and c.1905 (with one later insert c.1918), pasted or tipped in (sometimes several to a leaf, on the recto, verso or both sides), with designs for jewellery and a photograph of a caricature of a man in silhouette (55), also 32 blank leaves. The watercolour, graphite and pen and ink drawings include jewellery designs for Mrs Furse, May Morris, Amaryllis Hacon and Edith Emma Cooper [Michael Field].
Apart from the main manufacturer's label there is a smaller label specifying the size of the book, and a leaflet from H.G. Murphy, Craftsman in Fine Metals, with an itemized bill for the manufacture of a pendant, signed by Murphy and dated "6 Dec. 28."
Inscribed on the first leaf: "Designs for Jewellery,/done In Richmond 1899./C Ricketts.
Seven small sketches [1962-8-9-2(59-65)] loose in an envelope stuck in the back of this book have been mounted in another Ricketts album (200.a.12).
See 'Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon - An Aesthetic Partnership', exhibition catalogue by Stephen Calloway and Paul Delaney, Orleans House Gallery (Twickenham), 3 March - 20 May 1979; 'At the Sign of the Dial - Charles Haslewood Shannon and his Circle', Usher Gallery (Lincoln), 9 August - 13 September 1987, etc. (touring exhibition).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1979 May-Mar, Twickenham, Orleans House Gallery, 'Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon: An Aesthetic Partnership', no.125.
- Acquisition date
- 1962
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1962,0809.2.1
