Vintage Musical (Gilbert) Tie

Musicians, lyricists, and other musical types will enjoy this 1877 antiquarian art nouveau book cover design from W.S. Gilbert's Fifty Bab Ballads. It was a collection written under the name "Bab" by W.S. Gilbert (he of Gilbert & Sullivan musical fame) and was created for a journal called "Fun" in 1861. He had written them under pressure as he needed the meagre payments, and they were ""composed hastily, and under the discomforting necessity of having to turn out a quantity of lively verse on a certain day of each week." They were written in the style of nonsense, satire and absurdity.