CHRISTMAS - CALLIGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPT.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Wonderful Christmas Story told by St Luke. A beautiful arts and crafts style calligraphic Christmas gift, inscribed in orange ink to the final leaf "Written for Miss Ellen D. Sharpe by her friend S. B. Russell at Snowshill, on the Cotswolds, in November 1928".The work was created by Sydney Bolton Russell (1866-1938), the father of the arts and crafts furniture designer Gordon Russell (1892-1980). Sydney moved to the Cotswolds in 1904 when he bought the Lygon Arms in Broadway. He renovated the property in 1910 with the help of the arts and crafts architect Charles Bateman, and it was at this time that Gordon developed an increasing interest in furniture design and the wider arts and crafts movement as he repaired the inn's antique furniture.Sydney moved out of the inn in 1915, which was by then a hotel of national repute, and to the neighbouring town of Snowshill and a home he again renovated with Batemen, in order to spend more time on his own artistic endeavours. In 1922 he and Gordon established Russell and Sons, a brand which shaped 20th-century furniture design. The recipient of this Christmas gift was Ellen Dexter Sharpe (1861-1953) a patron of the arts in Providence who gave numerous donations to the Rhode Island School of Design. Russell travelled to Boston in October 1926 and likely met Sharpe on this visit.

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