Caroline Billin Currie
Caroline Billin Currie | |
|---|---|
'A View of Sonning Bridge', fore-edge painting by Currie from 1927/8 | |
| Born | Caroline Billin Curry 12 December 1849 Helston, Cornwall |
| Died | 2 April 1940 |
| Occupation | Miniature-painter |
| Known for | Providing miniature art for all Cosway book-bindings |
| Signature | |
Caroline Billin Currie (known professionally as C. B. Currie or Miss Currie, 1849–1940) was an English miniature-painter and fore-edge painter best known for her work on Cosway bindings.
Life and career
She was born Caroline Billin Curry, the youngest of twelve children, in Helston, Cornwall, in 1849.[1]
By 1901, she was working for John Harrison Stonehouse in London at the Henry Sotheran & Co. bookshop.[1] Listed as a 'copyist', she did not attach her name to her work until 1911 when the popularity of her paintings made her the first individual named in the Sotheran catalogue as an artist.[2][3] She painted ivory miniatures for the Cosway bindings produced by the bookbinder Rivière, later progressing onto fore-edges.[1]
Art
Currie's fore-edge paintings often reproduced photographs or other works of art, sometimes unrelated to the content of their books. She was a versatile artist rendering subjects including portraits, international landscapes, and even a cricket match.[4] Currie is often acknowledged as one of the most talented and prestigious miniature-painters of the twentieth century.[5][6][3]
Currie was unusual among miniature-artists in that she signed and numbered her fore-edge paintings, inserting a limitation statement on a colophon page with her stamped or inked signature from 1913.[7][8] A total of 172 of her unique fore-edge paintings are known. She is also thought to have worked on most of the thousand miniatures appearing in Cosway bindings.[1] The presence of one or more Currie illustrations is diagnostic of a true Cosway binding.[6][9]
She continued painting until three years before her death in 1940, and was succeeded as Rivière's fore-edge painter by Helen Haywood.[3]
References
- ^ a b c d Weber, Jeff (2010). An Annotated Dictionary of Fore-edge Painting Artists and Binders: With a Catalogue Raisonné. The fore-edge paintings of Miss C. B. Currie. Jeff Weber Rare Books.
- ^ Gray, Victor (2011). Bookmen: London: 250 Years of Sotheran Bookselling. Henry Sotheran Limited. pp. 207–8. ISBN 978-0-9508219-6-2.
- ^ a b c Weber, Jeff. Masterpieces of Fore-Edge Painting (PDF). p. 44.
- ^ Weber, Carl Jefferson (1966). Fore-edge Painting: A Historical Survey of a Curious Art in Book Decoration. Harvey House. p. 152.
- ^ Schneideman, Sophie. On the Distaff Side: Women Makers from 1897 to the Present Day (PDF). p. 25.
- ^ a b "Explaining Cosway bindings". AbeBooks UK. 2022-02-24. Retrieved 2025-05-22.
- ^ Kent, Allen; Lancour, Harold; Daily, Jay E. (1973-07-01). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 9 - Fore-Edge Painting to Germany, Libraries and Information Centers in. CRC Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8247-2109-1.
- ^ Know Your Antiques Cosway Bindings. Bibi Mohamed, incollect. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
- ^ The Secret Language of Rare Books: Cosway-Style Bindings. Rebecca Romney, Bauman Rare Books, 5 May 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2022.