Colour lithograph engraving, with illustration of two lovers, headed 'THE DECORATED ALBUM'

Landscape, on one side of a piece of thick paper 24 x 30.5 cm. The print itself is 22 x 27.5 cm. The print is clear and entire on lightly-aged paper, with wear to extremities and some repair to reverse, to which a tissue guard has been attached. Enclosed within a decorative border of birds and flowers printed in burgundy, brown and gold, is a delicate illustration (9 x 15 cm), somewhat akin to a Baxter print, showing a sylvan scene with two young lovers in seventeenth-century attire. The girl, attractively dressed in a bright blue gown, with roses in her bosom and hair, leans on a stone ledge, an anguished look on her face, and her back turned to a handsome swain, seated with book open in hand. The title, in a decorative font, is embedded in the border above the illustration, with the publisher's slug similarly-enclosed beneath it. Scarce. There is no record of any book by this title, published by Ward or any other publisher. The high standard of work produced by the company, including designs by Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane, was commemorated by an exhibition, with accompanying booklet, by Belfast Libraries in 2004.