'Sixteen songs for six pence'
- Object:
Illustration
- Place of origin:
London (published)
- Date:
ca.1920 (published)
- Artist/Maker:
Fraser, Claud Lovat, born 1890 - died 1921 (artist)
Poetry Bookshop (publisher) - Materials and Techniques:
chromolithograph on paper
- Museum number:
RENIER.425
- Gallery location:
In Storage
Claud Lovat Fraser (1890-1921) was an English artist, designer and author. An authority on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ballad sheets and broadsides, Fraser teamed up with Holbrook Jackson and the poet Ralph Hodgson Lovat Fraser in 1913 to establish a small publishing firm, The Sign of the Flying Fame. The firm aimed to make poetry more accessible to the general public by producing decorative poetry broadsides and chapbooks at an affordable price. Fraser was particularly interested in the interplay between text and illustration and incorporated both elements inseparably in his designs. After the war, Fraser produced designs for Harold Munro's Poetry Bookshop and for the Curwen Press.
The Poetry Bookshop, 35 Devonshire Street, Theobalds Road, London, ran from 1913 to 1926 and sold and published poetry by living artists. Among the works published by the Poetry Bookshop was Ezra Pound's seminal 1914 anthology Des Imagistes. Customers were encouraged to browse, and several poets took up residence there, including Wilfred Wilson Gibson and Robert Frost. The shop's best-sellers were hand-coloured rhyme sheets for children, such as this nursery sheet designed by Claud Lovat Fraser, incorporating popular nursery rhymes such as 'Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?', 'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick' and 'Jack Sprat could eat no fat'.
