Enormous, elaborate and highly decorated, the Great Bookcase was made to hold art books in the London office of William Burges (1827–81), the eminent Victorian architect and designer. Work on it began around 1859 and was completed by 1862, when it was included in the Medieval Court at the International Exhibition in London. Although the design was based on surviving medieval furniture, the bookcase remains a purely 19th-century creation.

Burges believed that, in addition to serving a practical purpose, furniture should also tell a story. Here the emphasis is on the painted scenes and decoration. Fourteen leading artists worked on the Great Bookcase: Edward Burne-Jones, John Anster Fitzgerald, Henry Holiday, Stacy Marks, Albert Moore, Thomas Morton, Edward Poynter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Charles Rossiter, Frederick Smallfield, Simeon Solomon, William Frederick Yeames, Frederick Weeks, Nathaniel Westlake and Burges himself.

The decoration is divided into Christian themes on the left side of the cabinet and pagan themes on the right side. These themes are expressed by allegories of poetry, architecture, sculpture, painting and music. The large number of artists who worked on the Great Bookcase was unprecedented. On the right or Pagan side: Rhodopis ordering the building of a pyramid (by E.J. Poynter); Sappo serenading Phaon (by Henry Holiday); Apelles painting the first portrait (by Frederick Smallfield); and Pygmalion and Galatea (by Simeon Solomon). On the left or Christian side: St. John and the New Jerusalem (by Solomon); the apparition of Beatrice to Dante (Dante by Poynter; Beatrice by D.G. Rossetti); Edward I and Torrel (by Albert Moore); and Fra Angelico painting the Virgin (by Thomas Morten). On the sides are St. Augustine (by Solomon) and Plato (by Charles Rossiter); St. Cecilia (by Morten) and Orpheus (by W.F. Yeames); the sirens (by J.A. Fitzgerald); and the Harpies (by Frederick Weekes). On the base appear four Metamorphosic figures: Arachne, the Pierides and Syrinx (all by Stacy Marks). Running horizontally between each major section are bands of decoration by Poynter, symbolising Sea, Earth and Air: the shells and fishes of the ocean; the flowers and beasts of the field; the birds of the air; the stars of the firmament - as well as Aesop's Fables and the Story of Cock Robin (executed, like the eight spandrels of the arches across the centre, by Burges himself). Crowning the whole composition are the Muses (all by Poynter) inset along the cornice; and three painted gables: Religion and Love (both by N. J. N. Westlake) flanking Art, the centrepiece of the whole scheme (appropriately by Burne-Jones). Inside the doors are birds (by Stacy Marks). [1]

Although the paintings are of the highest quality, the cabinet-making evidently was not: the bookcase collapsed in 1878 and had to be substantially rebuilt. Despite acknowledging that the bookcase was ‘not acceptable to present day taste’, Kenneth Clark, then Keeper of the Western Art Department, purchased it for the Ashmolean in 1933.

1. J. Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream, London, John Murray Ltd, London, 1981. 321.

The Great Bookcase.


Great bookcase
On display
Great bookcase (WA1933.26)
© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (image)

Sketchbook V&A E.1-1955 labelled on front cover 91 D 37, held in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
A list within this sketchbook records the work done between 1856 and 1861. Amongst the work recorded for 1860 is the following entry
"Small oil figure of Art Burges".