In the 185os 17 Red Lion Square was home to the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who rented rooms there. He recommended the rooms, despite their ‘dampness and decrepitude’, to his friends William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, who moved in to the square in 1856. William Morris went on to open a furniture shop with Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Charles Faulkner at 8 Red Lion Square, which became Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The house it was in was alas demolished.

The Decorative Arts Society (which is an excellent organisation, details here) last week organised a walk round Bloomsbury in the footsteps of William Morris. It was led by Alec Forshaw, author of the excellent book about 49 Great Ormond Street An Address in Bloomsbury which we sell in the shop. First we went to 19 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which was designed (as an office building for Ruskin’s solicitor) by Morris’s close friend and colleague Philip Webb in 1868. Number 19 is still a solicitor’s premises but is well worth a look from the outside, especially because of the beautiful railings along the front. (Photograph taken from Buildington.)  More details about ‘the fields’ here: they are definitely vaut le detour, being one of London’s hidden gems, the largest public square in London.

‘The Balcony’ dates from 1926. Gwen Raverat of course illustrated The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart, Persephone Book No. 37. All the Claire Leighton and Gwen Raverat wood engravings can be seen at Abbott and Holder 30 Museum Street (opposite the British Museum) until May 12th and we highly recommend a visit – they are in two small rooms, beautifully hung, and Abbott and Holder itself is unique:  the building is a marvel and a visit to the top floor (where the Gwen Raverats are hung) with its beautiful windows and window boxes and light and air and views of Bloomsbury and London-ish (and very friendly) atmosphere is something extremely special.

The Gwen Raverat wood engravings in the Abbott and Holder exhibition  are from an album of proofs compiled by the artist and given to her daughter. ‘Street by Moonlight, Vence’ is one of the few that has not yet been sold.

‘Hampstead Heath’ 1929. This wood engraving was printed in an edition of 30. It was also published as a newspaper advertisement for the Underground  Railways Company, as it was then called. Like the engravings on the Post yesterday and the day before, this proof has now been sold. (For the keen: a 400 page PhD about Claire Leighton by Caroline Mesrobian Hickman is available online here.)

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‘Umbrella Menders, Toulon’ by Clare Leighton also dates from the mid 1920s.

There is an exhibition at Abbott and Holder, round the corner from the shop (at 30 Museum Street), of wood engravings by two of our very favourites, Clare Leighton and Gwen Raverat. The exhibition runs until May 12th and the woodcuts are for sale. First up:  proof for ‘Toulon Washerwomen’  1925, printed in an edition of 75.