A curator formed by collections
Strange entered the Civil Service in 1881 and transferred to the South Kensington Museum in 1889, before its renaming as the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the museum library he catalogued and indexed prints and drawings.
His publications ranged from a practical manual of lettering, Alphabets, to Japanese Illustration and The Colour-Prints of Japan. With Gleeson White he edited Bell’s Cathedral Series and contributed its volume on Worcester. His literary work included the privately printed Palissy in Prison and Other Poems (1892).
His research materials survive in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Its Strange collection contains more than six hundred illustrations of Japanese prints, annotated with such details as artists, subjects, sales and collections. The archive gives a concrete picture of scholarship built through comparison and the tracking of individual works. He also belonged to the Japan Society and wrote about Hiroshige, Japanese printing methods and lacquer.
Strange became Keeper of Woodwork at the V&A. During the First World War he served in the army and subsequently worked in the Ministry of Food before returning to the museum. After retirement he edited Old Furniture, a magazine of domestic ornament. He died in 1929; the V&A received his bequest of Francis Dodd’s 1919 charcoal portrait, which records him as Lieutenant-Colonel Strange.
Selecting stories for an illustrated book
Strange selected and edited Stories from the Pentamerone. The 1911 Macmillan title credits Giambattista Basile as author and Warwick Goble as illustrator. Its opening note explains that the English version follows John Edward Taylor’s translation of 1847. Goble supplied thirty-two illustrations for this new presentation of Basile’s tales.
