I am an intern at the V&A, undertaking a 5-month project to catalogue and research works on paper by Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886). Caldecott was an artist and illustrator, best known for his annual ‘Picture Books’, including ‘The House that Jack Built’ and ‘Babes in the Wood’. Through these blog posts I hope to shed more light on his life and career, and the process of finding out more about the V&A’s collection of his work.
The V&A’s collection contains seven of Randolph Caldecott’s sketchbooks, six of which had some initial cataloguing completed already when the project began. Reading the descriptions, it became clear these sketchbooks contained studies and sketches that would go on to inform many of the more developed pieces in the collection, and that they would give a valuable insight into the background of these works. However, it was the seventh, uncatalogued, sketchbook that proved to contain some of the most delightful insights into Caldecott’s life, as well as a surprising link to the V&A.
Caldecott was known to carry a small sketchbook with him whilst he travelled, and a pencil annotation in the inside front cover of this one gives a clue to his destination: ‘Manchester to London 5hrs’. The sketchbook starts with a collection of sketches of rural life around Northwest England, where Caldecott lived until 1872. Amongst these is a pencil drawing of Old Dee Bridge, Chester. Soon enough though, Caldecott is off on his 5-hour train journey from Manchester to London. He documents this with his typical good humour, with a cartoon showing a man growing tired hour-by-hour, only to perk up and put on his top hat once they pull into London.
Overleaf, it is possibly the most mundane part of the page which is the most exciting. Amongst two sketches of lions, there is a sketch of a window with the words ‘GRILL ROOM’ written on it in reverse. Caldecott has visited the V&A! Although it would’ve been known to him as the South Kensington Museum, this is definitive evidence that Caldecott visited the site.
The Grill Room, now known as the Poynter Room, was one of the V&A’s three refreshment rooms that opened in 1868. The rest of the room was richly decorated with ceramic tiles, though Caldecott has not depicted this – maybe he was too busy tucking into his lunch.
It is also possible to identify another museum Caldecott visited on his trip. Above the grill room is a highly stylised drawing of a lion, which comes from a 17th-century dish by Thomas Toft. Toft’s design is very distinctive, and it is easy now to pick out the dish in the V&A’s Ceramics galleries, but it was not always part of the Museum’s collection. At the time of Caldecott’s sightseeing trip, the dish was part of the collection of the Museum of Practical Geology, housed at Jermyn Street in Westminster. This is confirmed by its appearance in the 1871 catalogue of British pottery and porcelain at the museum.
The Museum of Practical Geology, later the Geological Museum, became one of the V&A’s Exhibition Road neighbours in 1935 before being absorbed into the Natural History Museum, where many of the objects form part of the Red Zone galleries. Those wanting to replicate the Victorian experience, however, should head to level four of the V&A. Approximately 1,500 of the over 2,500 decorative arts objects transferred between the museums in 1901 can be found across on display at V&A South Kensington, including the dish by Thomas Toft depicted in Caldecott’s sketchbook. Alternatively, you can find them online on Explore the Collections.
Looking at this sketchbook is a reminder just how influential the V&A’s collections have been on generations of artists and visitors, and the importance of maintaining them as a sourcebook for the creative economy in years to come. I wonder if Randolph Caldecott, visiting the V&A as a very junior artist, ever imagined that the sketchbook in his hand would one day be a part of its collections.
