[H.M. O'Kane | Pyrography Binding] Pre-Raphaelite Ballads

Morris, William. Pre-Raphaelite Ballads. New York: A. Wessels, 1900. [Designed and partly printed by Clarke Conwell at the Elston Press.] Limited to 500 numbered copies on Old Stratford paper, of which this is #292. Printed with red initials and illustrated with black & white full-page decorations by H.M. O'Kane. Bound in grey suede with a pyrographed design of two large flowers on a stylized field, with a tall budding flower in between. White glossy patterned endpapers. The binding has been secured with a leather cord at the spine. Measures approx. 6" x 7.5". Some wear to edges and spotting to suede on front and rear. Small chips and tears to endpapers, with browned spots.  “…O'Kane is to be congratulated that [her] work has a quickly apparent charm, and that amid a multitude of pitfalls [she] has succeeded in giving Morris’s ballads a suitable setting, for the first and last thing that strikes the reader…is an atmosphere of fitness” (The New York Times Saturday Book Review, 1900).