Alice C. Morse exhibit was a popular success

This past spring, the Macdonald-Kelce Library at the University of Tampa played host to an exhibit of trade book bindings designed by Alice C. Morse between 1890 and 1903. The exhibit was curated by Mindell Dubansky of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and first shown at the Grolier Club. She based the exhibit in large part upon an archive donated to the Metropolitan by Morse, who had an active career designing bindings for major trade publishers like Dodd, Mead and the Century Co.

On the first floor of the library visitors found displays of books from two broad periods of the Golden Age of decorated trade bindings: 1830-1890 and 1890-1920. Upstairs were the handsome panels lent by Dubansky, as well as complementary displays of books by Alice Morse and her contemporaries.