Possible arsenic green binding. Store in zip-top plastic bag. Handle with nitrile gloves. Wash hands afterward.

Shakespeare's Midsummer night's dream : with illustrations / designed and modelled by W. Boyton Kirk, esq., A.R.H.A. for a dessert service manufactured by Messrs. Kerr, Binns, and company ...

Dublin : University Press. James McGlashan, 1853.

1 volume ; 26 cm

This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.

Ireland -- Dublin, -- publication place.

272907

From dealer's description: "KIRK, W. Boyton. SHAKSPERE’S MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. With illustrations, as designed and modelled by W. Boyton Kirk, esq., A.R.H.A. for a dessert service manufactured by Messrs. Kerr, Binns, and company... Royal Porcelain Works, Worcester, Dublin, Philadelphia, and New York, for the Dublin Great Exhibition of 1853. Lithographed by Day & son, lithographers to the Queen. Dublin: printed at the University Press. James McGlashan, 50, Upper Sackville-Street. 1853. £300 4to (245 x 165mm), pp. [iv], 35; with frontispiece and 12 plates (one folding), all lithographed by Day & son; in the original green cloth binding with gilt figures on both covers, spine lettered in gilt. (Expertly recased and the leaves all resewn into the binding.) First and presumably only edition: this commemorates a Shakespeare-themed dessert service made for the Great Dublin Exhibition of 1853, which ran from May to October and was housed in a temporary building in the grounds of Leinster House. This specially-designed dessert service was created by the young William Boyton Kirk (1824-1900): it is explained in a preface, which is then followed by the text of the play, illustrated by the various figures that Kirk had designed for the service – although quite how they fitted into a set of porcelain for use on a table is not very easy to understand: each seems to be in effect a small statue group, with no practical application. Pasted inside is a printed sheet indicating that this was one of the copies given to the members of the Exhibition Committee in June 1853: the committee passed a resolution thanking Mr W.H. Kerr, the manufacturer, for ‘his great zeal in forwarding the Manufactures of Ireland, by using, for the beautiful Service of China brought into the Exhibition, principally Irish materials, art, and labour’. " Ordered from Christopher Edwards, D9674, 2023-08-07, List 89, item #33

272907