ALBUM AMICORUM. ~ 'Souvenir'. Highly decorated box containing drawings and writings of friendship.
Very charming and elaborately decorated ‘friendship box’ of full black patterned morocco richly decorated on both sides and the spine with gilt tooling and onlays of red and green morocco, gauffered gilt edges and gilt inner dentelles, with a lining of pink watered silk with 4 stiff silk coloured flaps to contain the 17 sheets of gilt lined paper and the embossed paper card to weigh them down. 9 of the sheets contain drawings, embroidery and verses or greetings from the friends of the owner or recipient of this lavish box. 9 x 15 cm, landscape 12mo., in extremely good condition, with very slight wear to upper joint and a little bumping to corners. Housed in the original green textured paper covered slipcase. The slipcase is a little worn but otherwise a very ornate, handsome item.
The contents, all on the same pieces of gilt edged paper, comprise a superbly executed watercolour of a scene of a naval battle; a detailed pencil drawing of a church inscribed with ‘De votre ami C.L. Guerin’ and dated 19 Janvier 1846; a fine pencil drawing of flowers signed M. Anemiaet; a pencil drawing of a man leading a dressage horse by J.K. Voet; an epigram about friendship in French from F.W. Ketjen [perhaps the judge from Nijmegan Francois Willem Ketjen (1833-1876)]; a pencil drawing of two hands with an epigram in Latin about friendship from E.D.G. Frahm dated August 184; a direction from the Book of Ruth “my heart desires you to be brave” in German dated 24th Jan 1849 from J.H. Keijser in Arnhem (”theology undergraduate”); an embroidery of forget-me-nots from July 1852 with a poem to ‘cher cousin’ in French from J.G. Happel [probably Johanna Gerarda Happel from Zaltbommel]; and a pen and ink drawing of people on a bridge by a building dated 1852. There are further 8 pieces of blank gilt edged paper.