At first glance this tooled buff-coloured leather card case decorated with a charming
scene of two girls looks ordinary enough. What made it a rare find for the lucky
owner was that the scene is taken from a Kate Greenaway illustration.
Plate 515 of the book, ‘Briggs & Co's Patent Transferring Papers’ (published around
1880) shows the exact motif under the ‘Villages Scenes’ section of the chapter headed
‘Kate Greenaway’.
Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) was one of the most popular British book illustration
in the latter part of the 19th Century, and is best known for her sugar-sweet pictures
of little children and girls in bonnets.
