The Baby’s Opera

Artisan: Patricia Steele (Lakeside Miniatures)
Date: 2022
Dimensions: 22 x 20 x 5 mm. / ⅞ x ¾ x ⅛ inches (height x width x depth)
Inventory number: 2022.151
Intended Room: Day Nursery
Category: Books

Provenance: Purchased from the artist’s shop on eBay in May 2022.

A miniature replica of another of Walter Crane’s pioneering and beautifully illustrated books for children. Like several other books in our collection, it was actually published after 1890, but I couldn’t resist its charming cover and the beautifully reproduced illustrations and musical scores inside. The music for the traditional nursery rhymes was apparently gathered by Walter Crane’s sister Lucy, and the cover makes the grand claim: ‘A Book of Old Rhymes with New Dresses… The Music by the Earliest Masters.’

This particular edition was published in the very early 1900s by Frederick Warne and Co in New York, so of course the question also remains of how it came to be in the Quartermaines’ nursery. I may have to invent a doting American aunt of some variety, as many miniature books have been drawn from the excellent digital stocks of American libraries…