Beaudesert, Staffordshire, Antique Morris Woodblock Print, circa 1870

Printed in color by Benjamin Fawcett for Morris's Picturesque Views of Seats, circa 1870, this antique print of Beaudesert, Staffordshire, shows a long red brick Elizabethan and Jacobean country house front. Its center is marked by a clock tower with a small cupola, and further domed turrets rise along the roofline.

A gravel drive curves in from the left across an open lawn toward the entrance, and birds are printed in flight against a sky worked in warm gold cloud suggesting sunset, moving from gold near the horizon to cooler gray above. The brickwork is built up in a warm, slightly variegated red, with the clock face and the stone dressings around the windows and door picked out in a paler, cooler tone. The roofline, with its several towers and turrets of different heights, gives the silhouette real variety against the sky, and a scatter of small trees closes the view at both edges without crowding the house.

Its source is A Series of Picturesque Views of Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, edited by the Reverend Francis Orpen Morris (1810 to 1893), naturalist and author of the History of British Birds, for the London publisher William Mackenzie, with drawings largely by Alexander Francis Lydon; this plate is from an issue of circa 1870. The color was printed from woodblocks by Benjamin Fawcett (1808 to 1893) of Driffield, who also printed Morris's bird books: a color wood engraving built from separate blocks in register, not hand colored.

Admirers of the house, anyone with ties to Staffordshire and collectors of English country house views will enjoy this antique print of Beaudesert, Staffordshire, an original Victorian plate removed from the book and suitable for framing. The sheet has its original wide margins, with the title Beaudesert lettered in small capitals below the image.

This antique print is in good condition for its age. The paper shows light toning consistent with age, together with a few small spots in the margins and a line of binding holes along the lower edge, where the plate was once bound into the book. Please review the images for further condition details.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.