This is one of four drawings in the album relating to the brooch, which is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. It was designed by Ricketts for his friend the poet Edith Emma Cooper (pseudonym Michael Field) and intended for her birthday on 12 January 1900. It was completed early by the goldsmiths Carlo and Arthur Giuliano and she was able to wear it on Christmas day 1899. It is based on the designs for bird brooches by Edward Burne Jones, who in turn was probably inspired by later medieval mosaics in Venice (where he visited in 1862) in the form of olive trees. It was one of only a few jewellery designs by the artist actually executed and a version belonging to Margaret Burne Jones was exhibited at the New Gallery in Regent Street in 1892-3, which Ricketts is likely to have seen. A later version of the brooch (c.1904) was made for Laurence Binyon’s wife Cicely, but Ricketts was dissatisfied with the results. In his diary entry for 21 May 1904 he records: ‘The jewel of bird for Mrs Binyon arrived, it was so hideous and clumsy that I was dumfounded and depressed...gave it to the model, Esther Deacon’. Indeed many of the subtleties of the design so clearly delineated by the artist in his drawings have been lost during the process of execution. See C. Gere and G. C. Munn, 'Artist's Jewellery: Pre-Raphaelite to Arts and Crafts', London 1898, pp.134-8 (pl.65); S. Calloway, 'Charles Ricketts: Subtle and Fantastic Decorator', London 1979, p.29; and D. Scarisbrick, 'Charles Ricketts and his designs for Jewellery', 'Apollo', Sept 1982, p.164 and p.167. This drawing sits together on the same album leaf with 1962.0809.2.8. From an album of fifty eight drawings by Charles Ricketts. For full description and comment, see 1962,0809.2.1 (which is the first image in the album).