Scrapbook

This book is a rare survivor from the mid-18th century of the (probably commonplace) practice by craftsmen of compiling scrapbooks with engravings, drawings, and other useful material taken from a wide variety of sources to guide them in their own designs. A better preserved and more comprehensive example is the scrapbook of Gideon Saint, a carver and gilder of Princes Street, London, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Like Gideon Saint, the compiler of this scrapbook has shown a distinctly Francophile taste with nearly all the engravings derived or plagiarised from French sources, with the notable exception of the six plates from Matthias Lock's A New Book of Ornament (1752). The other designs include four plates of Chinese grotesques by Francis Vivares, possibly after Pillement; six plates from a set entitled A New Drawing Book of Ornamental Shields, Masks, &c with plates by Vivares and Anthony Walker, dated 1752; plate 7 of Lajoue's Second Livre de Cartouches; two cartouches by Hubert Gravelot; four plates from J. Collins' A New Book of Shields engraved by J.S.Muller; a French Baroque print of a trophy; two vases, reversed, after Charles Eisen dated 1752, 1753; the title page and four plates from A New Book of Hunting Trophies… designed by Huet and engraved by P. Angier, published by Vivares, 1757; 15 fragments of borders for print rooms published by Vivares, dated 1754, 1767 and 1768.The book is inscribed on the cover 'ORNAMENTS / BY Lock…Vivares…and Others'.

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