Stained Glass: Its Origin & Application
New York: Privately Printed, 1922. Octavo (8 7/8 inches tall), original gray paper boards, red and black printed title label mounted to front board, uncut. Fine. Item #1625
"THE POPULAR BELIEF IN THE PRECEDING CENTURIES WAS THAT THE WINDOWS WERE COMPOSED OF PRECIOUS STONES"
Fine Press printing of this essay on Stained Glass and "the magnificence of the painted window." Designed by Bruce Rogers and privately printed for Roy Grosvenor Thomas, a prominent collector and future dealer in Stained Glass. Illustrated with a captioned frontispiece and three additional black-and-white plates (all reproduced from the Grosvenor Thomas collection). Very scarce.
The Grosvenor Thomas Collection would form the nucleus of Thomas and Drake, art dealers specializing in Stained Glass. With an address on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Thomas and Drake were listed as dealers in Stained Glass by the Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Thomas and Drake, a transatlantic art dealership formed by landscape painter George Grosvenor Thomas (1856-1923), his son Roy Thomas (1886-1952), and glass-painter and glazier Wilfred Drake (1879-1948). Together, they were the only art dealers to have specialised solely in the selling of Medieval and Renaissance stained glass during the first half of the twentieth century, and did so on an unprecedented scale" (Groll).
Understood to be designed by Bruce Rogers, this volume consists of five parts charting the technical history and artistic principles of Stained Glass. 1. How a Window was made, 2. Corrosion, 3. Forgeries of Old Glass Panels, 4. Chronological Characteristics of the Periods of Stained Glass, 5. Secular Use of Stained Glass. Printed on fine watermarked paper with historiated initials in black, and with titles, shoulder notes, and ornamental tailpieces, all printed in red. This copy with a tiny, embossed stamp—"William Edwin Rudge / New York"—at the bottom of the title page, probably from the Rudge company library. See M. Groll. Thomas and Drake and the Transatlantic Trade in Stained Glass, 1900-1950 (PhD thesis, University of York).
Price: $100.00