Florence Kate Kingsford

By 1900, Cockerell was exhibiting her work, and in 1901, St John Hornby, the founder of Ashendene Press, hired her to illuminate an Ashendene edition of The Song of Songs Which Is Solomon's printed on vellum. She proceeded to illuminate the 40-odd copies in the edition with variations in the illustrations and decorations for each one. • Illustration — A Dead Hunter, illuminated by Florence Kingsford Between 1901 and 1904, she contributed decorative initials (often gold) to a number of limited-edition books published by Essex House Press, each featuring a single long poem. These included Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1901, on vellum), Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion (1901), Robert Burns's Tam O'Shanter (1902, on vellum), John Milton's Comus (1902, on vellum), Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner (1904), John Dryden's Alexander's Feast (1904, on vellum), Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village (1904, on vellum). • Illustration — A Human Skeleton at the Foot of a Rock Face, illuminated by Florence Kingsford In 1906, Cockerell went to Egypt to work for the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, making drawings of his finds. While there, she produced an illuminated version of an ancient Egyptian text attributed to the pharaoh Akhenaten and translated by Francis Llewellyn Griffith. The resulting manuscript, The Illuminated Hymn to Aten the Sun-Disc, features boldly composed paintings of everyday life painted in Cockerell's typically refined style, paired with calligraphic text. It is now in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1908, Cockerell created an illuminated version of The Story of a Hunter by Olive Schreiner. Again featuring delicate paintings complemented by bold calligraphy, this manuscript is in the collection of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, California, United States. In 1914, Cockerell's work was exhibited at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. In 1916, Cockerell was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which effectively ended her career as an illuminator and calligrapher because of the degree to which it affected her hand coordination.