Prints collections

Aubrey Beardsley, poster, 'Pseudonym & Autonym Libraries'. Museum no. E.1376-1931

'The Pseudonym & Autonym Libraries', lithograph by Aubrey Beardsley, England, UK, 19th century. Museum no. E.1376-1931

The V&A Prints collections are famous for encompassing both fine art and commercial production. It consists of about 500,000 objects, including prints from the Renaissance to the present day, printed designs for the decorative arts, topographical and portrait prints, caricatures and greeting cards, and ephemera and commercial graphics. It also contains the national collections of posters and of wallpapers. It represents all the main printmaking processes, through the prints themselves, and through its outstanding collection of printmaking tools and equipment. Major prints by international contemporary artists show current directions in printmaking - new media, new formats, and new cultural contexts.

The Prints collections include:

Caricatures and cartoons
Costume prints, including fashion plates and fan leaves
Designs for the decorative arts, including a comprehensive engraved ornament collection
Ephemera and commercial graphics, such as advertisements, packaging, stationery
Fine art prints from the Renaissance to the present day
Greeting cards
Illustration
Posters
Playing cards
Portraits (including the Seligman Bequest of portrait prints)
Prints illustrating social history and religious symbolism
Reproductive prints
Topographic prints
Trade cards
Wallpapers and decorative papers

Key examples from the Prints collections are displayed in the Museum's galleries, while the other items can be seen in the Prints & Drawings Study Room.

Prints collecting policy

The V&A sometimes buys particular prints not just because they are marvellous prints in their own right but also because they tell us about things that our visitors are interested in or throw light on other areas of the V&A collections. Six prints bought using the Julie and Robert Breckman Print Fund are cases in point. They span three centuries and many subjects but each demonstrates why prints form an integral part of the V&A’s collections.

Historic British collections

The V&A’s splendid British Galleries opened in 2001 and the Museum is continuing to add to its historic British collections. Figure 1, The Royall Oake of Brittanyne, shows a diabolical Oliver Cromwell supervising the hacking down of a tree symbolising the British monarchy. The print will be going into a Civil War topic box available to V&A visitors in the Prints & Drawings Study Room. Topic boxes are a selection of prints and drawings on a particular theme. They can be seen in the Prints & Drawings Study Room, where works that are not on display are available to visitors. A topic box about drawing is the likely destination of lithograph in figure 2. Entitled Sketching from Nature, Tunbridge Wells, 1830, it makes fun of the early 19th-century fashion for ladies taking up drawing outdoors as a hobby.