Bryn Mawr College

Violet Oakley was chosen to design the program for the first Bryn Mawr College May Day Festival in 1900, an annual spring ritual that continues to this day. Organized by Bryn Mawr alumna Evangeline Walker Andrews of the Class of 1893, the inaugural event was planned “to present with historical accuracy, even to the most minute details, the May day revels of the Elizabethans.” An admirer of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic, Oakley composed the program cover in a style that emulated the books printed at William Morris’s Kelmscott Press (1891–98). Motley revelers in Elizabethan garb circle maypoles on the Bryn Mawr campus, identified by the towers of Pembroke Arch on the horizon. (Designed by Philadelphia architects Cope and Stewardson in 1892–94, Pembroke was the first collegiate arch in the United States.) A decorative border of entwined doves and roses, motifs employed by Morris in print and textiles, runs along the left side of the pictorial block. The program title, “Ye Order of ye Merrie May Games. . .” begins with an ornamental initial and continues in a calligraphic script. While the program cover is printed in black, red, green, and yellow, the text inside is limited to the traditional combination of black and red. Oakley stayed in touch with Andrews and painted her portrait in 1931.