5 Sunday School gilt embossed cards with Baxter-style prints
London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ca. 1850s. Cards measure 9.75 cm (3.8 inches) tall, good to very good, three with some abrasions and old paper stuck to versos from having been in an album. Titles are: A Child's Morning Hymn, Morning, Evening, To An Aunt, and Lord's Day Morning. Very rare, no original copies in OCLC located in any institutions, but similar sets discussed with great admiration by Gascoigne in "Milestones in Colour Printing 1457-1859" -- as part of a number of series of reward cards, beginning in 1854, given out at Sunday Schools and which cost a penny each, usually issued in sets of 8, illustrated with Baxter prints (the Baxter copyright had ended in 1854) -- "On each card an improving text or verse is accompanied by an enchanting little view of some appropriate scene, and the whole is framed in an embossed and gilded border....[In 1858] Nelson produced two more series of 'Juvenile Picture Cards.' These also are delicate and delightful, but the style now is essentially Nelson's own. Small bright oval chromolithographs are pasted down into the characteristic gold-dusted panels." (pp. 60-61). Gascoigne does not have a full bibliography of these cards ("...it is hard to tell how many were published..."). Item #H8436
Price: $75.00