WALLER, John Green. ~ Fifteen wooden printing blocks with fine pencil drawings on each depicting the vestments of various monastic orders.
15 original wood printed blocks, each with a detailed fine pencil drawing by John Green Waller. Each 6.2 x 3.4 x 2/3 cm and 13 with the title of the individual subject in pencil on one side and numbers on most of them in pencil. One is inscribed “Monastic orders drawn on the blocks by Mr. J.G. Waller FSA” and each has the stamp of “Williamson & Son/328 Strand” in London. The condition is excellent and the drawings are very clean and sharp.
The blocks are an unusual survival, showing an important part of the process of creating illustrations for a printed book. His detailed drawings formed the outline for an engraver. Luckily for us the publication clearly didn’t proceed so we have these beautiful examples of process.
The images include men and and one in the vestments of monastic orders including the Orders of S. Giovanni Batista del Penitenze, Saint Ambrose, the Crocigeri, the first brothers of the Holy Cross, the Crocigeri Portugalle, the Knights of Malta and the Heremitani brothers of the Ordine de Sancto.
Williamson & Son was a printing firm in London in the mid 19th century. There are examples of fully engraved blocks bearing their stamp in the V&A and Society of Antiquaries in London.
John Green Waller, FSA (1813-1905) was an artist, lithographer, etcher and antiquarian. He studied at the Royal Academy during the early 1830s, and had early success, exhibiting regularly at the Academy between 1835 and 1848, and winning a medal at the 1851 Great Exhibition.
He was very well known as “one of the foremost antiquaries of the Victoria era”. He co-founded the British Archaeological Association in 1844 and wrote “A Series of Monumental Brasses from the 13th to the 16th Century” (London, 1840-64) with his brother Lionel. He turned his artistic talents to the design of memorial brasses and stained glass windows - he was commissioned to create the ‘Chaucer’ window in Westminster Abbey over the poet’s grave (it has since been destroyed).