Nos. 218 -220 [i975 Burne-Jones exhibition] belong to a group of sketches for objects to be made by the architect and designer, W A S Benson. Burne-Jones met Benson about 1877. Strikingly good-looking he sat for the head of Pygmalion in the Pygmalion series (no. 137) and for his portrait (1881). When Burne-Jones bought a house in Rottingdean as a country retreat in 1880, Benson carried out the alterations and designed the furniture. Benson also made a pieces of armour needed for such paintings as the Perseus series and the first Briar Rose picture. Lady Burne-Jones wrote in her biography (II, p. 145): 'Sir Coutts Lindsay had a fine collection of old armour from which Edward made drawings, and in addition to this, with the help of Mr Benson he designed many pieces himself, expressly to lift them out of association with any historical time. It was Mr Benson who designed and made the King's crown in the large "Cophetua".' A number of these pieces, including the Cophetua crown, are reproduced in Vallance, op. cit. pp. 28-30
A circular lamp similar to that at the upper right is seen in the photograph of Burne-Jones'sgarden studio reproduced in the Art Annual, Christmas 1894, p. 30. This studio was built in 1882. The lamp to the left may be derived from a manuscript of the Traité des Tournois of King René in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. A lamp of this design which appears in one of the miniatures was dawn by Burne-Jones about 1866 in a sketchbook in the V & A exhibited here (no. 371 [1975 Burne-Jones exhibition]). It is taken from a reproduction in Henry Shaw's Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages, 1843.