MAUCHLINE WARE BINDING. BURNS, Robert. ~ The Poetical Works of Robert Burns with a Memoir of the Author's Life and A Glossary.
Colour frontispiece. Pp. xvi, 368. 12mo., in a good mauchline ware binding with a green leather spine decorated in gilt with a poet’s lyre and gilt lettering and tooling, sides of lacquered wood from trees which grew on the banks of the Doon where the Burns monumnet was built, with a transferred image of Burns on the upper board and one of the monument on the lower, all edges gilt. Slight rubbing to the spine, otherwise a very good copy.
Mauchline ware was a decorative technique that originated in the 1830s in the Scottish town of Mauchline in which a transfer print of a wood engraving or photograph or a colour design such as a tartan or floral motif, was applied to a lacquered wooden object, such as the boards of a bookbinding. In the 1860s in particular, photographs and stencils began to be used in the design process. Mauchline ware reached a peak of popularity in the 1880s, disappearing in the 1920s.