Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Sherborn, Charles William
SHERBORN, CHARLES WILLIAM (1831–1912), engraver, born 14 June 1831 at 43 Leicester Square, London, was the eldest son of Charles Sherborn, upholsterer, by his wife, Mary, daughter of Richard Bance, of Newbury. He was educated first at a local school and then at Cave House, Uxbridge, under a Mr. Wilkinson. In 1845 he left school and began attending the government school of drawing and design at Somerset House, being at the same time apprenticed to Robert Oliver, a silver-plate engraver in Rupert Street, Soho. In October 1852, having served his apprenticeship, he went abroad, staying in Paris some ten months and afterwards travelling in Italy. In September 1853 he settled in Geneva, where he remained three years, working as a goldsmith's designer and engraver. He returned to London in September 1856 and began engraving for the London jewellers, first in his father's house, and then in Jermyn Street, in a partnership which proved unsuccessful and was dissolved in 1860; but the same year he began again in Warwick Street, Regent Street.
Sherborn was a man to whom time and money meant little in comparison with perfecting himself at his craft, and he was not likely to succeed in a branch of the engraver's profession which afforded little scope for his skill. In 1872, in view of financial difficulties, he abandoned business and decided to work independently as an etcher and engraver. His early training had been limited, and it was chiefly with reproduction-work after contemporary portrait and subject painters, and later on with book-plates, that he gained a livelihood. Original work he had always done for his own pleasure, and his etchings of London architecture and riverside deserve praise for their sincerity. It is in fact a quality of sincerity which lifts his work above the level of painstaking endeavour, and entitles him to a place among British engravers. His finest achievement is a series of over 350 book-plates which he designed and engraved chiefly between 1881 and 1912. They are mostly of the armorial type, but some are pictorial and a few are portraits. His mastery of fine engraving technique was unrivalled among the working engravers of his time, and came into its own in reproducing these formal and intricate designs. He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and was elected a foundation member of the Society of Painter-Etchers in 1884.
Sherborn died at 1 Finborough Road, South Kensington, 10 February 1912. He married in 1860 Hannah Simpson (died 1922), daughter of Thomas Davies, watchmaker, and widow of Thomas Wait, draper, of Liverpool, and by her had four sons and a daughter.
Sherborn and his family presented a complete set of his book-plates, engravings, and etchings to the British Museum, and representative selections of the book-plates to the national collections in France, Germany, and the United States.
[Charles Davies Sherborn (son), The Life and Work of Charles William Sherborn, 1912, with three portraits, bibliography, catalogue of paintings, engravings, &c., and list of book-plates (by G. H. Viner); a typewritten catalogue, made by G. H. Viner, describing the unfinished states of the book-plates, is in the British Museum Print Room.]