The Queen’s Gambit, the Netflix series about a troubled chess prodigy named Beth Harman, first aired in October, 2020. Within a month, it had been viewed by 62 million households worldwide. The Queen’s Gambit has become the platform’s most-watched series in 63 countries and, according to the streaming service, is also its most successful scripted limited series ever. Since then, chess websites and coaches have reported soaring interest in online matches, club membership, and private tuition. eBay alone saw a 276% increase in searches for chess sets following the show’s airing (The Guardian). Perhaps most remarkable is that an unusual proportion of those signing up are women; by December, 2020, chess.com had already seen a 15% uplift in female registerees (New York Times). To contextualise the significance of this, globally the ratio of male to female chess grandmasters (a prestigious title for the world’s best players) is, today, around 85 : 2. To put this another way, of roughly 1,700 chess grandmasters currently, fewer than 40 of them are women.
When Mrs. W. J. Baird’s The Twentieth Century Retractor, Chess Fantasies, and Letter Problems was published in 1907, prominent women chess players were even fewer and further between. Edith Baird was one of the most prolific composers of chess problems of her day and was sometimes referred to in the press as ‘The Queen of Chess’. A quote from one of her male contemporaries in Lasker’s Chess Magazine neatly demonstrates, however, that her reception in the male-dominated sport would not always have been so plauditory: the author asserts that women simply lack the ‘qualities of concentration, comprehensiveness, impartiality and, above all, a spark of originality’ required in order to become great chess players.
CHESS – BAIRD, Mrs W. J. The Twentieth Century Retractor, Chess Fantasies, and Letter Problems. 1907, £1,250.00.
The critique in Lasker’sChess Magazine is echoed in comments made by male players decades later. Bobby Fischer, a chess legend and arguably the best player of all time, was deeply misogynistic as a precocious teen. In a 1962 interview, 19 years old and already a champion, he explained why women cannot play.
Interviewer: Do women make bad chess players?
Fischer: Oh, they’re terrible chess players… I don’t know why, I just guess they’re not so smart. […] They have never turned out a good woman chess player. Never one that could stand up to a man in the history of chess.
Fischer goes on to say that women shouldn’t ‘ with intellectual affairs’ but ‘should keep strictly to the home’ (though not cooking, he says, they aren’t good at that either). It should be noted that, when asked a similar question in the 1970s, Fischer did in fact express support for female inclusivity in chess. However, similarly sexist views continue to pervade the sport. In 2015, English grandmaster Nigel Short suggested that people “gracefully accept it as a fact” that men will always be inherently better players: “we just have different skills,” he argued (Time magazine). Short failed to mention the irony that he has been defeated by women (ibid.).
It is important to highlight that women have played chess for centuries. The Chess Game, a 1555 painting by Sofonisba Anguissola, depicts an intimate family scene in which Anguissola’s own sisters play together under the supervision of a governess. The patron saint of chess, is St Teresa of Avila, who wrote, as a senior nun in 1566, The Way of Perfection, a guide for her charges in which she playfully compared contemplative prayer to the discipline of mastering the game.
Now you will reprove me for talking about games, as we do not play them in this house and are forbidden to do so. That will show you what kind of a mother God has given you —— she even knows about vanities like this! However, they say that the game is sometimes legitimate. How legitimate it will be for us to play it in this way, and, if we play it frequently, how quickly we shall give checkmate to this Divine King! He will not be able to move out of our check nor will he desire to do so. (christianhistoryinstitute.org)
St Teresa later removed this analogy but modern editors reintroduced it. According to the Christian History Institute, The Way of Perfection aimed to ‘enthuse with a love of prayer and teach them how to practice it and therefore grow spiritually’. It continues to be influential in the Catholic approach to prayer.
There is, of course, ancient precedent for hostility towards women’s participation in chess. From its earliest days, chess was an intensely and inherently gendered game. Before the 15th century the movement of the queen was limited to just one diagonal square: ‘“aslant only”, as a medieval chess treatise put it, “because women are so greedy that they will take nothing except by rapine and injustice”’ (The Economist). It was around 1500 when the Queen was liberated and given free rein to traverse the chess board in one move. This apparently resulted in a new nickname for the game, ‘“madwoman’s chess” (The Independent). Nonetheless it is this later version that we know and play today.
Illustration of King Otto IV of Brandenburg playing chess with an unidentified woman, Manasse Codex, Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, f. 13r. Heidelberg University Library.
Although The Queen’s Gambit was praised for its technical precision (thanks to the guidance of former world chess champion Garry Kasparov), female experts identified a subtle yet crucial inaccuracy: the male characters were simply “too nice” to Beth Harman: this was the verdict of the world’s greatest woman chess champion, Judit Polgár, who has won more accolades than can be feasibly listed (though highlights include becoming International Grandmaster at just 15 years old, the youngest Grandmaster ever, as well as being the first woman to participate in a men’s world championship final). Sadly, Polgár was (and remains) an outlier. Today, only one of the world’s top 100 players is a woman, China’s Hou Yifan, and she is still just the third woman to have ever broken into this group. Polgár’s career continued to flourish until 2014, when she retired. She now runs a foundation and festival which promote and encourage chess among children and particularly girls.
After The Queen’s Gambit aired, The New York Times published an article in which it quoted sisters Rowan Field, 12, and Lila, 11, who both auditioned for the role of Beth Harman and have competed in prestigious international competitions. Their response to the series is poignant: simply that it “shows that there are female chess players who can be extremely good”.
In 1907, Edith Baird broke the norm with her chess , challenged expectations and became a leading voice in chess. Her Twentieth Century Retractor offers stimulating challenges to its owner; in Baird’s career she “composed more than 2,000 problems which… were noted for their soundness” (Hooper & Whyld 27), and there are remarkably few errors detected in her body of work. The book is also handsome – one of “the most elegant chess books ever to appear” (Hooper & Whyld 27), and uses Shakespearean quotes to enrich the solving experience and provide hints towards the solution.
But Baird’s work also represents what female chess players – and women in general – can achieve when defying stereotype threat and misogyny. Baird regularly contributed to newspapers, as well as the British Chess Magazine, and was a pioneer in multi-move retractor problems, chess puzzles in which the solver must work backwards, taking back a specified number of moves before a forward mating move can be performed; The Twentieth Century Retractor is, in fact, one of the first known collections of such problems. Now seems the perfect time to celebrate this important book.
Baird’s Twentieth Century Retractor is included in our catalogue Summer 2021.
Our regularly scheduled miscellany for the summer months, this catalogue showcases a selection of new acquisitions to our shelves.
For this catalogue, we are proud to partner with Beat – the UK’s leading eating disorder charity. Peter Harrington will donate 20 per cent of the list price of all catalogue orders to Beat to support its efforts to provide prompt help to those affected.
Dr Philip W. Errington joined Peter Harrington in April 2021 after over 21 years at Sotheby’s where he was a director and senior specialist. He received his BA, MA and PhD from the Department of English at University College where he is currently an honorary research associate. A bibliographer by training, he has published major bibliographies on John Masefield and J.K. Rowling. He has lectured and written widely on Masefield with his work published by Penguin Classics and Carcanet, and others. We talk to Philip about his career and role at Peter Harrington.
First thing’s first: you are a prolific bibliographer, but could you give us more detail about what this entails?
I like the idea of a “prolific bibliographer”: I’ve only published two! But they take such a long time that this is, I suppose, quite a large number. At the most basic level, a bibliography is about establishing a canon and chronology. My particular work is descriptive bibliography: the study and description of books as objects.
A bibliographer doesn’t necessarily care about the artistic merit of a text, but rather the focus is on printing and production. It’s a distinct discipline and there are rules you have to follow in your methodology. I like to think of it as creating a map which – for a single author bibliography – helps researchers, critics, book collectors, etc., navigate a writer’s works. To mix analogies, it’s a bit like archaeology for books.
When did you decide you wanted to be a bibliographer?
As an undergraduate I discovered that there were huge gaps in a specific topic in which I was interested. I filled them in by sitting for days in a library with rolls and rolls of microfilm. (Today, of course, I could achieve the same result in a few hours using online databases). In many ways, this led to an M.A. and then a PhD.
A few decades ago, a bibliography would provide very simple descriptions and that was that. Today there’s more scope to delve into authors’ and publishers’ archives. I’ve spent many happy hours in libraries across the world establishing various bibliographical facts. I particularly remember connecting correspondence between an author, his or her literary agent and the publisher. Until then, these collections had been split between several archives (and two continents). Pulling together a single narrative from different sources was exhilarating. I should say, of course, that I appreciate the contents of a book, too – but a bibliographer’s perspective adds another dimension to it!
Dr Errington’s two published biographies on John Masefield and J. K. Rowling
You were previously at Sotheby’s for 21 years – can you tell us more about what you did there and your career prior to joining Peter Harrington?
I joined the auction world straight after my PhD, and it was my introduction to the commercial world of antiquarian books and manuscripts. Twenty-one years was a long time to stay in my first job and I slowly climbed the slippery Sotheby’s slope to become a director, senior specialist and auctioneer. I worked on English Literature sales, together with children’s literature, private press and original illustrations. There are many, many career highlights and I worked with some phenomenal collections, wonderful collectors and many authors or illustrators. But my arrival at Peter Harrington has rekindled the excitement and joy of the book trade for me. It’s refreshing to join a place where a passion for books is shared by all.
Your PhD on John Masefield was published by the British Library – and that was just the beginning of your expertise. What particularly draws you to his work?
Unless you’d like to do a feature on Masefield, I’d better be brief… In 1952, writing of second-hand bookstalls, Masefield stated that the “out-of-fashion is always cheap, and usually much better than the fashion has the wit to think”. I think it’s a great epitaph on Masefield’s own work. I’ve published editions of Masefield’s work with Penguin Classics, Carcanet, Pen and Sword, Egmont, New York Review of Books and The Folio Society. I’ve given lectures and seminars. I’ve appeared on TV and made newspaper headlines. But the joy of reading Masefield is constant. Although many people now only remember him as the author of the children’s fantasy The Box of Delights or as a poet, some of his prose is magnificent. He writes with the precision of a poet and has never failed to inspire me.
First edition of John Masefield’s The Box of Delights, 1935, £175.00. (BOOK SOLD)
Having made record sales of J. K. Rowling’s work – The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which sold for £1.95M, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which sold in 2013 for £150,000 – it’s safe to say that you are a Rowling expert in the rare books industry. How did you come to focus on her work?
Because I was responsible for children’s literature at Sotheby’s, I got to run the show when Jo Rowling decided to sell a seventh manuscript copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard for her charity, Lumos, in 2007. I visited her at home in Edinburgh and discussed the project, catalogued the item and took it on exhibition to New York. There were specific reasons why it sold for £1.95M (including two very committed bidders)and I’m very proud it’s still the world record for a modern literary manuscript sold at auction. When human rights organisation English PEN then organised a charity sale in 2013, I approached Jo for a contribution and an annotated copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the result.
One significant achievement of my work with the author is my second bibliography. I well remember Pom Harrington viewing a copy of Philosopher’s Stone at Sotheby’s and pointing out that the wealth of misleading information in the trade about what makes a copy of Harry Potter valuable meant a bibliography was needed. One thing led to another and the first edition of my book was published in 2015; an updated edition followed in 2017. I’m very conscious that one of the (if not the) leading dealers for Harry Potter material now has Rowling’s bibliographer as a member of its team. Combining everyone’s expertise makes me question why someone with a Harry Potter enquiry would do anything except come to us!
You have a great deal of experience in children’s literature, including visiting the studio of Quentin Blake and viewing his extensive archive, discussing rabbits with Richard Adams, achieving a world record for the sale of a book illustrator’s work – an unknown illustration by Beatrix Potter – and then beating your own record when you sold an original drawing of the ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ for £430,000! What led you to specialise in this area?
I love children’s books and, indeed, original book illustrations. Everyone remembers their early books and if, like me, you were fortunate to be surrounded by loads of books as a child, it’s part of who we are. Collecting children’s literature brings with it the big problem of condition. If a book has been read and loved by a child, it may not survive in a collectable state. But I challenge anyone to pick up a first edition of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Potter’s Peter Rabbit or Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and not get a little thrill from holding a copy of how the world first received these stories.
With artwork there’s also the excitement that an original illustration frequently differs from its many reproductions in print. The wonderful illustrated books of the 1910s and ‘20s were gorgeous and beautifully produced, but look at an original Arthur Rackham watercolour and the colours’ vibrancy is unique. Likewise, E.H. Shepard’s work frequently has a texture that can’t be captured when reprinted; the snow scenes at the beginning of The House at Pooh Corner involved Shepard drawing in ink and then using a blade to scrape off a layer. Reproduced in black and white, it’s a wonderful image, but that original finish cannot be replicated.
First edition’s of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1970) and Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902).
I often read and listened to the audio tape of The Tiger Who Came to Tea as a child and hear you have an excellent anecdote about having tea with the author herself. Were there any visiting tigers..?
I was asked to visit Judith Kerr at her home. She was a wonderful old lady, rather diminutive but with alert sparkling eyes. As she pulled out drawer after drawer of her original artwork we discussed her inspiration for Mog (one of my childhood favourites) and then, of course, Sophie’s tea-time guest. After carefully returning all the artwork to their drawers, she asked whether I would like a cup of tea! It was a wonderful treat, although I wondered whether I ought to eat all the food in the house before drinking all the water from the taps… I was, I’m afraid to say, terribly polite, but then… so was the tiger…
Another fascinating story surrounds your presentation of the Siegfried Sassoon Archive to MPs in the Houses of Parliament. Could you tell us more about the circumstances around this event?
In 2009 Sotheby’s was instructed to offer the remaining archive of Siegfried Sassoon for sale. Various experts took control of different parts of the collection and I had the pleasure of cataloguing the poet’s manuscript diaries. These included diaries from the first world war trenches with appropriate splashes of mud. There was one obvious place that this material should go and Cambridge University Library agreed to a private purchase. A significant contribution to the purchase price was provided by the National Heritage Memorial Fund and, as part of their own promotion, they requested that parts of the archive be shown to interested MPs in the Houses of Parliament. I visited (in order to report back to Sotheby’s’ security about the safety of the exhibition space) and, after that rather pointless bit of red tape, my colleagues and I had the pleasure of showing off some exhibition highlights. It was remarkable to see many MPs experience jaw-dropping moments of realisation about the power of original manuscript material.
Finally, what’s the next exciting project in the pipeline – is there anything in particular you are looking forward to working on with Peter Harrington?
Where do I start? Peter Harrington has the motto, “Where Rare Books Live”. For the last few years I’d been beginning to think rare books were seriously ill, so it’s brilliant to join the team for whom rare books are living and important and electrifying. And, who knows, there may even be another bibliography that needs to be researched…
The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a youth movement founded in 1920 by British artist, author, and former Scouts advocate John Hargrave, responded to the horrors of World War I with a utopian vision of the future. Hargrave was one of a number of troop leaders who abdicated leading positions in Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting organisation during and in the immediate aftermath of the war; as the Scouts adopted more military-style drills and discipline, its pacifist members disavowed what they viewed as an increasingly imperialist agenda.
Hargrave’s alternative movement refocused on the socialist and naturalist ideals that had helped shape the British Scouting organisation at its inception, and was further characterised by wide-ranging global ambitions, infusing the camping and community focuses of Scouting with a zealous social vision and a mystical aesthetic. It was endorsed by authors, artists, scientists, theosophists, politicians, women’s rights activists and Nobel Prize winners, and members included several former suffragettes as well as photographer Angus McBean, folk-dance revivalist Rolf Gardiner (who interested his friend D. H. Lawrence in the movement and inspired Kibbo Kift qualities in Lady Chatterley’s Mellors), and Roland Berrill who later founded Mensa. A more remotely involved “Advisory Committee” included H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley, Rabindranath Tagore, Maurice Maeterlink, and Havelock Ellis, and T. E. Lawrence is reputed to have permitted Kindred members to camp on his land. H. G. Wells, whose literature imagines a World State, was perhaps influential in the Kibbo Kift’s essential politics and philosophy of geopolitical unification, while some of its more mystical beliefs took inspiration from Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’ and the writings of Aleister Crowley.
Left: John Hargrave, Head Man of the Kibbo Kift. Right: Cecil Watt Paul Jones (Old Mole) consecrating Old Sarum banner on the Wessex Pilgrimage, 1929. Images courtesy of the Kibbo Kift Foundation.
No small task, the Kindred strove for world peace. In practice, this would be achieved through a strong sense of community (members were collectively ‘Kinfolk’, wore stylised clothing and participated in group rituals and ceremonies), education (from Oceanography to the Occult, no subject was neglected), and immersion in nature. Outdoor sports, camping and woodcraft dominated the schedule. Nature and life were ‘frequently capitalised and personified with divine qualities’, with Life coming to resemble a ‘stand-alone philosophical category’ (Pollen). One risque Kibbo Kift banner depicting, with gold paint on black fabric, a sperm cell penetrating two symbolic circles, is inscribed by Hargrave as ‘The Genesis of life: a spermatozoon fertilising the ovum introducing two chromosomes’.
Indeed, reproduction was considered another tool for the world’s improvement and eugenic principles were incorporated into Kibbo Kift philosophies. Hargrave, whose parents were Quakers, served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the first world war and his experience not only reinforced his pacifism, but also prompted a fear, repugnant to the modern reader, that the quality of future generations may be degraded by the post-war population: ‘Our best blood soaks into the sand of Sulva Bay, and into the mud and grass of Flanders. We have weeded out all our weaklings by medical examination, and they are left at home – to breed!’ (Hargrave, qtd. by Pollen). Though unimaginable today, prior to the Holocaust, eugenics had a place in mainstream philosophical and scientific thought: ‘Eugenics was a part of a general bundle of “modern” ideas about the reform of society’ (Bland and Hall, qtd. by Pollen). This may have also characterised the Kibbo Kift’s long term objective: a ‘confraternity of elites, comprised of fit, trained, virile and beautiful men and women who would marry, reproduce and thereby establish a ‘heritage of health’…’ (Pollen). Indeed, although kinswomen rarely held positions of authority, unlike the Scouts the Kindred allowed both genders and all ages to become members.
Kibbo Kift archers. Image courtesy of the Kibbo Kift Foundation.
The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift amalgamated skills, ethea and disciplines, in fact prioritising the breakdown of barriers between them. Their ‘practices were wide-ranging, extending across health and handicraft, pacifism and propaganda, myth and magic, education and economics’ (Donlon Books). Kinfolk were able to loan philosophical and scholarly texts from a circulating library; they were urged to study accessible sciences – those that can be explored locally without specialist equipment, such as geography, anthropology or psychology; and members could earn Scout-inspired ‘Badges of Knowledge’. An understanding of economics and politics was also necessary, since Kinfolk were expected to actively support ‘major political plans, such as reorganisation of industry on a non-competitive basis, synchronised international disarmament, the establishment of a single international currency, and a world council to include ‘every civilised and primitive nation’’ (Pollen). Though still couched in colonial language, allegiance to these goals meant advocating for the Kibbo Kift’s central goal: to reform the world socially and economically, and to ultimately unite it.
Andrew Marr has described the slow dissolution of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift pithily: “The rambling stopped and the marching began” (qtd. by ‘The Guardian’). Hargrave’s growing interest in economics and disgust at the hefty profits shored up by banks drove him, toward the end of the 1920s, to create a more specific target for his organisation:
‘… after the 1929 crash, Hargrave ditched all the costumes and archaic terminology: the group was restyled for a harsher decade with berets, green shirts and grey trousers. Soon to be called the Green Shirts, the members who stayed demonstrated in favour of the National Dividend, joining the throng of young men and women in uniform on the streets of England. In the 1930s, peace had become militancy’ (Savage, ‘The Guardian’).
HARGRAVE, John. The Confession of the Kibbo Kift. A Declaration and General Exposition of the Work of the Kindred. 1927.
As world-healing ambitions, crafting and camping fell to the wayside, Kindred membership declined. Pacifist, nature-loving artists and intellectuals who had helped build the movement were alienated by the shift towards a more aggressive form of activism, and perhaps knew not to challenge Hargrave’s new direction – in 1924 he had expelled dissenting members. However, parallel to the creation of Hargrave’s Green Shirts, another organisation was born which still exists today. This new youth movement, called Woodcraft Folk, had been subsequently founded by Leslie Paul, a former kinsmen who was ejected from the group in ‘24. Registered as a charity in 1965 and mostly run by volunteers, its intentions are not far from those of the Kibbo Kift in its beginning:
‘Through our activities, outings and camps we help our members to:
understand important issues like the environment, world debt and global conflict
develop activities focused on sustainable development
encourage children to think, hoping that they will help build a peaceful, fairer world.’ (woodcraftfolk.org.uk)
Although expressed in simpler, more achievable terms than Hargrave’s ideas were, the legacy of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift – its desire to reform the world and build a more peaceful society – continues.
43 Dover Street, Peter Harrington’s Mayfair shop, has a fashionable history. In the mid-20th Century it was owned by sisters Diana and Betty Pacquin; run as a chic boutique where bespoke outfits were created for genteel ladies. Though little more is known about their business at Dover Street, a Times editorial in 1938 describes a pair of the sisters’ designs, custom-made when they worked at Liberty London and worn to ‘the Second Court of the season’ at Buckingham Palace by a debutante and her mother. The article describes the Pacquins’ handiwork as showcased by its high-society wearers: one Mrs. R. S. Rait Kerr attended the ball in a shining gown of gold lamé, complete with a matching chiffon train; her daughter, Miss Diana Rait Kerr, donned an Empire gown of white matelassé and silver lamé, and a corsage laced with silver. The sisters, who were Jewish and adopted the surname Pacquin as a pseudonym, may have taken inspiration from the globally renowned French couturier, Jeanne Paquin, whose London premises was just down the road at 39 Dover Street.
Diana and Betty were continuing a tradition of high fashion at 43 Dover Street. In the 1920s it housed The Three Studios, a photography studio run by Yvonne Gregory and her husband, together with their friend and colleague Marcus Adams. A portrait and fashion photographer, as well as an artist, Yvonne also shot actresses, dancers and musicians, and produced several books of nude photography with her husband, Bertram Park.
The Three Photographers Studio at 43 Dover Street
Yvonne Gregory with her daughter June
Yvonne’s business card
(Many thanks to Sisters of the Lens, @sistersofthelens, for this information about Gregory and The Three Photographers, and for the use of these images)
In 1970, 43 Dover Street belonged to Hawkes & Curtis, which then owned two different shops for shirt making and tailoring (the other location in Burlington Gardens). On Dover Street, cutter Teddy Watson rivalled nearby Savile Row as he produced bespoke suits for the Prince of Wales. The tailors of Hawes & Curtis also catered to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Lucian Freud and Burt Lancaster in their time.
It seems apt, therefore, to have continued our Dover Street shop’s sartorial legacy with a dedicated catalogue of rare and unique fashion-related items. Below, we explore some of the highlights.
The late British fashion designer Norman Hartnell’s first royal commission was for the wedding gown of Princess Alice for her marriage to the Duke of Gloucester in 1935. But it was three years later that he established himself as one of the most revered couturiers of the day when, at the request of the King, he masterminded the outfits of the Queen’s state visit to France. His resulting designs received worldwide admiration and, soon after in 1940, Hartnell received his first royal warrant of appointment to the Queen (he would also be Dressmaker by Appointment to her daughter, Elizabeth II). His relationship with the royal family endured for over 40 years, conceiving some of the most famous gowns for royal women, including for Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation and her wedding day, and Princess Margaret’s bridal dress in 1960. In 1977, he became a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, in recognition of his distinguished personal service to the monarch. Prudence Glenn, the then fashion editor of The Times, proclaimed Hartnell ‘The First Fashion Knight’.
Hartnell’s skill, which knew no bounds, is captured in this likely unique souvenir of Queen Elizabeth’s state visit to Paris in 1957. The work contains striking illustrations of Her Majesty’s fashion ensembles during the event, painstakingly rendered in ink and bold paints and accompanied by swatches of original fabrics and oval composites of the diverse accessories she wore.
Silver & Gold, Norman Hartnell
HARTNELL, Norman. Silver and Gold. 1955.
Norman Hartnell has received renewed global recognition for the Peau De Soie taffeta and diamanté-embellished dress worn by Princess Beatrice for her marriage to Edoardo Mopelli Mozzi this year. On loan from her grandmother, it was originally worn by Queen Elizabeth II for the film premiere of Lawrence in Arabia in London. Princess Eugenie, taking a modern and environmentally conscious approach, chose to contemporise Hartnell’s design for her wedding, adding organza puff sleeves and adjusting the hemline. The gown’s customisation was completed by two of Hartnell’s successors, designers Angela Kelly and Stewart Parvin. It is testament to his prowess that Hartnell’s work required such little adaptation – the piece has an exceptionally timeless aesthetic.
In this presentation copy of Silver & Gold, titled after his 1953 collection of over 100 gowns for guests at Elizabeth II’s coronation, Hartnell has inscribed a gift message to its recipient, Princess Mary: “To Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal. With respect, gratitude and humble best wishes at Christmastime. Norman Hartnell, Christmas 1955.” The first-edition book details the designer’s rise to the role of Dressmaker by Appointment to both Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother, and offers intimate backgrounds to the fashion choices of a number of key royal appearances.
According to a Times editorial, Constance Dorothy Peel OBE in “her industry was astonishing, for she went down coalmines, inspected prisons, reformatories and factories, examined schools and studied diet for the young, in addition to regular journalism and four novels … In Life’s Enchanted Cup … she made it clear that she worked out of necessity as well as pleasure: to provide for her two children, to support an aunt, and to save for her old age.” Peel, successful milliner, novelist, non-fiction author, autobiographer and journalist, is a rare example of a woman who was financially independent, enterprising in multiple industries and the sole provider for her family during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The unusual degree of autonomy Peel exercised is demonstrated by her decision to close her fashion business as a result of illness, as well as moral doubts about its value, and later pen her first novel, The Hat Shop, in 1914. She is an impressive historical figure. Despite her lack of childhood education and continuing health issues, she was an acclaimed writer of fiction and domestic guides, and investigative journalist focusing on social issues of the day; she later served on multiple government committees working to improve the lives of women in post-war Britain.
(DACHÉ, Lilly.) La Dépêche Directrice Andrée Vaudecrane; La note de Paris, directrice Gladys Capgras
Lilly Daché, America’s premier milliner during the 1940s, was a bold, ambitious and talented designer, and a wildly successful businesswoman. Born in Bègles, France, Daché trained as a milliner with her aunt in Bordeaux, as well as a dressmaker, and was eventually given an apprenticeship in Paris with designer Caroline Reboux, before going on to work for prestigious milliners Suzanne Talbot and Georgette. But Daché had set her sights on something bigger and, in 1924, moved to New York, where she was soon employed by a small hat shop, the Bonnet Shop, later purchasing it to start her own business. By the early ‘40s, Daché had an “elegant New York salon in which she employed 150 milliners, shops in Chicago and Miami, wholesale designs sold to more than forty stores across the country, and more than half a million dollars in business each year, selling hats priced from $35 to $500” (ANB). Quite a feat for just 15 years’ work.
Much like entrepreneurial fashion designers today, from Victoria Beckham to Rihanna, Daché recognised shifting markets and spearheaded several new ventures from the 1950s onwards: “she had completely revamped her salon and was designing, in addition to her own line of hats, dresses, accessories, jewellery, lingerie, furs, perfume, and cosmetics, plus men’s shirts and ties” (ibid.). Her commitment to an evolving enterprise is demonstrated by her continued subscription to and occasional highlighting of text in French fashion magazines, La Dépêche and La Note de Paris – collected here. Featuring the likes of Dior, Balenciaga and Balmain, as well as milliners Simone Cange and Madame Paulette, Daché’s faithful attention to these publications reflect her origins and identity as a cutting-edge French designer.
These photographs are a genuine snapshot of history, transporting you to the time they were taken; seen through the eyes of a photographer who worked nearly 100 years ago. The four well-preserved images of 1925 window displays at the glamorous Meier & Frank’s Department Store in Portland, Oregon, offer a real glimpse of jazz-era fashion as it would have appealed to North American ladies at the time. They were taken just 15 years after the store first opened – the building, designed by prolific American architect A. E. Doyle, still stands today in downtown Portland.
The photographs offer an invaluable historical reference for how flapper fashions were marketed during the Jazz Age. Two of the window displays pictured include distinctive art deco themes with Ikebana-inspired flower arrangements amongst geometric display elements. The styles include typically ‘20s drop-waist hemlines and cocktail dresses with full skirts in chiffon. One image creates a fantastic formalised setting, incorporating a large French Madame Pompadour-style fan in the background with heavy brocade swags, interspersed with large asparagus ferns in jardinières; another, identified as “Spring” on a small placard, includes an Italianate garden terrace setting with amphorae and rose-twined balusters.
This selection of items comes from our recent Fashion e-list. The list consists of a remarkable gathering of books and ephemera which trace the history and development of fashion and design from the early 19th century to the modern day.
Encompassing such topics as high street window displays, haute couture tailoring, handicrafts, the theory of weaving, costume design and wallpaper fashions, it also aims to highlight some of the crucial hidden skills behind the fashion industry, such as tracing the history of pattern-cutting, and key texts for weaving, dying, and boot-making.
This interactive catalogue has been created to be both mobile and desktop friendly, and to bring to life some of the extraordinary items from our shelves. We welcome feedback on your experience.
Peter Harrington blogger Lauren Hepburn talks to Luke about the role of a Bookseller at Peter Harrington.
How did you come to work for Peter Harrington?
Purely by chance: I left university and, after two brief and depressing spells in the corporate world, saw a notice for Peter Harrington Rare Books on a job board. The idea of working in a bookshop was appealing, but I had no idea at that point that you could have a career in rare books. I applied, got the job and have been here ever since!
What does your typical day at the bookshop look like?
Typically, I’ll be familiarising myself with the collecting interests of a client, sourcing books, addressing customer queries, and working with our cataloguers to determine whether an item might complement a specific person’s collection. Once we know what books you like, we bear your interests in mind and will let you know when something comes in that you might like.
Of course, we also have an open shop so I offer guidance to general browsers, too. Our books make excellent gifts, and I often field requests from customers who are searching for the perfect present for a loved one – Christmas is an especially busy time for me!
And what might an atypical day comprise of? Any unexpected duties, surprising discoveries/interactions or eccentric experiences?
We’re based in London but attend book fairs all over the world. A few years ago, one of my colleagues fell ill just before a flight to an event in Australia and I received a phone call saying that I’d be travelling to Melbourne that day. I rushed home to pack my suit and get to the airport, and just 24 hours later I was on the other side of the world. Very surreal.
Has the job changed or shaped your relationship with books and reading?
I certainly read more broadly than I used to. Our clients have a wide range of interests, which allows me to explore subjects I’ve previously been completely unfamiliar with. Recently I’ve had to sharpen up on polar exploration, printing practices of the Ottoman Empire and Pacific voyaging; biographies and bibliographies also make up a lot of my required reading. It’s exciting when a client wants to start a collection with an unusual theme and one I know nothing about.
If a customer walks in with material for valuation, or to offer for sale, how do you go about doing this for them on the spot?
We don’t offer a formal valuation service, but we’re always happy to take a look and give a rough idea as to whether it’s a treasure of great worth or something best kept for its sentimental value. Generally we speak from experience, but for more complex items we may ask customers to leave it with us for a day or two while we do some research.
What item would you purchase at Peter Harrington if money was no object?
The Nuremberg Chronicle. It’s an encyclopaedia of world history covering everything from the Creation through to 1493, when it was printed. It has the most incredible imagery: wonderful woodcuts of angels, saints, kings, popes, and mythical monsters, as well as large-scale illustrations of major cities in world history, such as Troy, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Rome, London and Nuremberg. It’s one of the most important works printed before 1500, and certainly the most complex. Our copy is a first edition and, remarkably, retains its 15th century binding. What’s not to like?
Are there pieces in the collection that you would particularly recommend to budding collectors?
Book collecting should be fun, and part of my job is to help clients build collections that are meaningful to them. For the aspiring collector, the best thing to do is call, email, or visit us at our shop in Mayfair. We’re delighted to discuss ideas and start a collection that is personal to you.
That being said, some titles and authors are particularly popular with collectors. Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are perfectly set up for collecting and can be as simple or complex as you like. The later editions tend to cost between £200 and £400.
Winston Churchill is another popular author. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is one of his most prominent works, and looks great in its book jackets. Start with this and The Second World War and you’ll have built the foundations of your Churchill collection! Both can be found for under £1,000.
Children’s author Roald Dahl has lots of stories that are fun to collect, and copies of Matilda and The BFG retail from around £300 to £500. Similarly, the Winnie the Pooh books are very popular. Begin at the end with The House at Pooh Corner, the final book in the series and the first to feature Tigger, and then work backwards, with Now We Are Six and Winnie the Pooh before completing the set with When We Were Very Young.
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