Brown leather notebook with clasp containing extensive drawings of Walter Crane’s travels in Ireland in the summer of 1901. These drawings of landscapes, shores-capes, and townscapes depict scenes from Crane’s time in Killiney, Killarney, Dublin, Bray, Cork, Glengarriff, Kenmare, and Cashel. Serving the function of a travel journal, most of the drawings are signed with dates and locations.

The sketchbook also includes drawings of building exteriors, such as Muckross Abbey and Hore Abbey, as well as a sketch of a dog, plants, and people. Within Crane’s seemingly apolitical journey he includes a drawing of the monument to the Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell located in Dublin. There are two pages of textual notes.

The medium is pencil on paper.

Dark blue leather notebook containing drawing techniques and sketching types. The sketchbook's date parallels Walter Crane's ideas on good design.

The sketchbook includes preliminary sketches, line drawings, perspective views drawings, and gesture drawing, as well as cartoons and portraiture. The subject matter varies from studies of flowers, such as the iris, to floral patterning. It includes preliminary sketches for his book design--roughly indicating how Crane saw double page spread as a basic design unit. The sketches also include a pram, a house exterior, and furniture.

One of the cartoon sketches shows a man at pulpit with flag (possibly William Morris: see illustration of Speech of William Morris Speaking from a Wagon in Hyde Park, Artist Remininance, p.440)

Some of the legible words in Crane’s rough writing refer to artistic media such as “gesso” and techniques “silverwork,” “relief,” “wood carving,” and “stencils.” One page in particular is dedicated to the scribbled letters which make the words Bases of Design. This sketchbook notably predates Crane’s publication titled The Bases of Design, by one year.

Medium: pencil on paper

Black leather-bound sketchbook containing visual content of an architectural nature as well as plans for a panel painting.
Architectural sketches include a building interior of a staircase, and a building exterior of of Weaponness Park in Scarborough England. The sketchbook includes a sleeping cat, a still life ink drawing of dried seaweed, soldiers, and a throne.

A mid-section of the sketchbook indicates Crane’s preliminary work for a commission. It includes a centralized composition of an enthroned figure followed by a processional figures on horseback, a floor plan, pages of notes with the repeated letters H.A.C., and costumed soldiers. These pages may have been part of the preliminary work that Crane did for his early twentieth-century commission to commemorate the soldiers of the Honorable Artillery Company (H.A.C.) who lost their lives during the Boer War.

Much of the textual content includes architectural and artistic terminology, such as cornices, wood carving, modelled panel. The notes contain information on measurements, on materials, and colours, types of clothing, and weapons. Numbers appear as dimensions, sums of money in British pounds, and time tables for the train. Evaluative language of student work appear under the headings “Reading College - Examination.”

The medium pencil on paper and ink on paper. The sketchbook includes a dried flower.

Green cloth-bound notebook featuring preliminary sketches of farm animals--including sheep, cows, horses, a dog (defecating), and a chicken. Extensively illustrated, the sketchbook includes landscapes of farmland and topographical sketches with notes on colouring as well as landscapes in watercolour. It includes portraits of a child and of a man, and details of a gate and a branch. The visual content includes a folded sheet of paper featuring profile and frontal portraits of the same man.

Crane’s handwriting notes include excerpts, quotes, and marginalia. Excerpts come from the art section from the The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art and the Westminster Review. Located on the sketchbook’s endpapers, Crane’s quotes Ralph Waldo on the use of the artist’s tools. Crane’s notation includes music notes with laughter “ha, ha, ha.”

Used by Crane in the summer and fall of 1864, the sketchbook corresponds with the period when Crane was beginning to illustrate a number of book covers and toybooks in partnership with the printer Edmund Evans. There is a possible connection between the animals and music notice in these sketches with farm animals and songs that feature in Crane’s early toybooks.

The medium is pencil, ink, and watercolour on paper.

Minutes of a meeting of the Executors of the last Will and Testament of Simon McTavish held on 14th May 1805. Executors present were William McGillivray, Duncan McGillivray, Joseph Frobisher, Isaac Todd, and James Reid.

Contains 1 bound volume of minutes for the Montreal Fire Club from 2nd April 1786 to 14th November 1814. First 6 pages outline the purpose and engagement of the club members. List of 14 the members appears on page [2].

Contains one ledger book (cashbook), half-filled, for Blackwood who was a retailer in Montréal.

Manuscript letter to McTavish signed Rod. Mackenzie, dated Montreal 11th May 1800.

Various outgoing and incoming correspondence mostly asking for information for research on Simon McTavish. Included is correspondence with the Public Archives of Canada and copies of 5 documents about the intended purchase of the McTavish grounds by the Government in 1828, sent by the Archives in response to a reference request by Baylis.

Various cards, letter, diagrams, and notes on the life of Simon McTavish and his family as received by Baylis from multiple incoming correspondence. A sizable amount of communication with Chiswick Parish Church Vicar, Rev. E. P. Gough, including a Parish magazine from June 1922. Also included are the inscriptions on the monuments of the children of Simon McTavish (William d.1818, Ann d. 1819, and Simon d. 1828) found at Chiswick in London, England.