Category Archives: Everyday life

A contemporary printmaker

Douce befriended some of the most celebrated artists of his time and his collections were widely used by them. When Grayson Perry visited the Ashmolean Print Room a few weeks ago, it was great fun to select some of Douce’s … Continue reading

Posted in Collections and Collectors, Engravings, Everyday life, Fools, History of printmaking, Museums, Prints, Satirical prints | Comments Off on A contemporary printmaker

Douce’s dream

In a previous post, I referred to Douce’s accounts of his dreams in his Book of Coincidences. In an undated entry probably written in 1817, Douce explained: I had a strange dream about eating a cross-bow as a broiled fish. … Continue reading

Posted in Antiquaries, Collections and Collectors, Everyday life, Networks, Prints, Sports | Comments Off on Douce’s dream

Interior design

The drawing below was made by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, an artist renown, among many other things, for getting his props right: Like other history painters working in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Ingres would have appreciated Douce’s … Continue reading

Posted in Antiquaries, Drawings, Everyday life, Fashion, Furniture, Networks, Paintings, Romanticism | Comments Off on Interior design

A peep at the balloon

On Saturday, 7 July 1810, the Oxford-born chemist James Sadler (1753-1828) took part in the celebrations of the installation of the new Chancellor of the University by ascending in a balloon from Merton fields with his fourteen-year-old son, Windham. The … Continue reading

Posted in Aerostation, Everyday life, London, Popular prints, Prints, Satirical prints, Science, Uncategorized, Woodcuts | Comments Off on A peep at the balloon

Parlour game

Bonnets are everywhere due to the bicentenary of Pride and Prejudice*. This blog could not resist the temptation to join in, especially when the said article of apparel features so prominently in Douce’s folders of costumes, where the fashion plate … Continue reading

Posted in Colour, Costumes, Everyday life, Fashion, Games, Literature, Prints, Wood-engravings | Comments Off on Parlour game

The cook’s oracle

In December 1826, Douce wrote to his friend George Cumberland:  If you will write a book of cockery for your Bristoldians & other gormandizers, you will get as rich as Dr Kitchener, who told me that he has sold 20,000 … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Cookery, Everyday life, Feast, Literature, Networks, Physicians, Wood-engravings | Comments Off on The cook’s oracle

The Star of the Kings

A few months ago, I came across the image below while cataloguing a series of prints of the months from a late seventeenth-century almanac in Douce’s collection: The man pouring water from a vase next to a fountain in the … Continue reading

Posted in Almanacs, Carols, Engravings, Everyday life, Feast, Festivals, Prints, Seasons, Stipple, Zodiac | Comments Off on The Star of the Kings

The ruff-setter

In 1817, the April issue of The Critical Review carried an article on Philip Stubbes’s The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), in which Douce and his print Der Kragen Setzer are mentioned with regard to extravagant fashions and to the moral … Continue reading

Posted in Costumes, Engravings, Everyday life, Fashion, Prints, Satirical prints, Shakespeare | Comments Off on The ruff-setter

“The Puck of Commentators”

One of Douce’s most assiduous correspondents in the 1790s was the Shakespeare scholar George Steevens (1736-1800), of whom the DNB says that “his wit and the associated learning […] earned him the name of the Puck of Commentators”: From his … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Collections and Collectors, Costumes, Dance of Death, Everyday life, Literature, Paintings, Prints, Shakespeare | Comments Off on “The Puck of Commentators”

The limping messenger

Douce’s illustrations from almanacs date from about the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the early 1830s. As is often the case with the part of his collection that remains arranged by subject, the images are taken out of … Continue reading

Posted in Almanacs, Drawings, Everyday life, Popular prints, Wood-engravings, Woodcuts | Comments Off on The limping messenger