Author: MOWBRAY Alfred Richard ( 1824 - 1875 ) (publisher) - The Anglican Missal - unique illuminated copy :
Title: The Anglican Missal being the order for the administration of the Holy Communion according to the use of the Church of England together with the Collects to be used throughout the Year.
Description: .: Oxford, printed and published by A.R. Mowbray at his office in Saint Aldate's Street, 1869, in-4°, 29,5 x 25 cm, 33 unpaginated leaves, printed in Gothic type, all with a double red typographical fillet border. Bound in full bleached vellum , richly decorated with gilt and thick red fillets which surround a large losenge with gilt initials in the centre (LSU ?). The central losenge is surrounded by small losenges filled with stylized gilt lilies, all edges gilt, pastedown and flyleaves in cream coloured watery silk, smooth spine with decorated gilt lilies within a thick red fillet. This is a unique illuminated copy. 33 pages (out of 64) have been illuminated by a professional hand in the mediaeval style; 3 full page hand painted miniatures (of which the Cannon plate); 4 nearly full-page initials; 5 manuscript titles with initials; 21 pages with large full page ornamental borders. Some miniatures are heightened with gold (sometimes with oxidation). The high quality of the illumination might lead us to the supposition that this copy was in fact a design example which had to serve for a printed chromolithography edition, possibly in another size. We could not verify if A.R. Mowbry ever entertained such a project. If not it remains an interesting question who the artist was. Alfred Mowbray founded in 1858 in Oxford a bookshop specialised in religious books. A London branch was opened in 1873. In 2006 the business moved to Hatchards on Piccadilly. .

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