CALKIN, Margaret Bernard (illum.); OXENHAM, John.

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A Little Te Deum of the Commonplace. A work of piety in more than one sense: an illuminated devotional manuscript on vellum, executed by prize-winning calligraphy student Calkin for her parents' Silver Wedding anniversary. The volume also marks her first foray into bookbinding, using tools of her own make; its accomplished execution is unsurprising given that she was the great-granddaughter of Robert Rivière and her uncles ran the bindery.Calkin (1895–1985) trained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, specialising in calligraphy under Graily Hewitt; this manuscript is a fine product of the English calligraphic revival fostered by Hewitt. She won the Queen's Scholarship in the same year that she illuminated this text, and subsequently continued her studies at Westminster College. Two typed notes, one tipped into the verso of the first blank and the other laid in, initialled by her brother Kenneth Bernard Calkin, explain that the binding and its tools were her own first attempts at the craft. The quatrefoil and foliate tools, designed and cut by Calkin herself, clearly show the influence of Cobden-Sanderson's work on early twentieth-century binding. Particularly pleasingly, these tooled forms are echoed throughout the manuscript decoration, creating an unusual correspondence between text and binding.In 1916, Calkin exhibited her illuminated work and binder's tools at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society's exhibition at the Royal Academy. Her post-war career encompassed a

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