Spenser, Edmund; Edwards, George Wharton (illustrator); [Witkin, Lee D.]
Limited edition, one of 450 copies printed by the DeVinne Press, of Edmund Spenser's ode to his bride Elizabeth Boyle, first published in 1595: "Set all your things in seemely good aray / Fit for so joyfull day, / The joyfulst day that ever sunne did see." The poem's twenty-four stanzas correspond to the hours of the wedding day, as Spenser describes the morning's preparations, the ceremony, the feast, and the final "safety of our joy" after nightfall. The decorative Art Nouveau binding and illustrations, informed by English private press book design, are the work of American painter George Wharton Edwards: "From cover to cover the book carries out one artistic scheme with the text, presenting a unique conception which is original with the artist" (Dodd, Mead & Company.) This edition of 450 copies was issued alongside a signed limited edition of 25 copies on vellum. Provenance: Lee D. Witkin, the influential New York gallerist who created the modern market for fine art photography before his early death from AIDS in 1984. A near-fine copy. Single volume, measuring 8.75 x 5.25: [60]. Original full pictorial vellum stamped in gilt and green; green and blue marbled endpapers. Title page printed in red and black; decorative borders and illustrations on every page. Bookseller label of Thos. V. Paul, Philadelphia, to front pastedown; penciled bookseller note to rear endpaper, "from library estate of Lee D. Witkin." With: original pale green pictorial cardboard box stamped in gilt, lined in coated white paper, original silk lifting ribbon. Vellum boards slightly bowed; volume no longer fits neatly in the publisher's box. Box rubbed and partly split at joint.
Van Gennep, Arnold; Jéquier, Gustave
Signed limited edition of a scarce title on ancient Egyptian textiles, numbered 77 of 125 copies, signed by the authors on the colophon, and published as part of the series Mémoires d'Archéologie et d'Ethnographie Comparées. (An additional twenty-five lettered copies were printed, not intended for sale.) The book's line drawings and tipped-in color plates, along with a sample sheet reproducing five woven silk bands of the period, display the breadth and skill of early Egyptian through Coptic weavers, highlighting their characteristic use of materials, colors, and patterns. The authors argue that the ancient Egyptians used tablets ("cartons," or cards) as their primary weaving device, a technology used in 1200-1500 BCE Europe and Scandinavia. This theory has been disproven: the Egyptians did, in fact, use looms. Text in French. BnF 1199; 5515. A very nearly fine copy of a key visual sourcebook of Egyptian textile design in its highly decorative publisher's binding. Folio, measuring 13 x 9.5 inches: [6], 7-130, [4]. Original color patterned linen-covered boards, brown endpapers, red silk ribbon marker. Illustrated with five tipped-in color plates, six photographic plates, one plate with five mounted woven silk fabric samples, and 135 illustrations throughout text. Faint spotting to foot of spine, deaccession stamps (Museum für Völkerkunde, Basel) and note to half-title.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Popular edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's ambitious exploration of female artistry, first published in London in 1856, in a hand-painted vellum binding. The story of the aspiring writer Aurora Leigh established Browning's own place in the literary canon: "The world of books is still the world." The iconography of this striking binding, with its foliate designs and rampant lion, reflects Aurora's Florentine origins. The binder's ticket is that of Giulio Giannini, who specialized in attractive souvenirs of Italy for arts-minded English tourists. His firm, still active today, did a brisk trade in "Florentine Style" bindings on English-language classics set in Italy: Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, Eliot's Romola, Howells's Tuscan Cities, and, of course, Aurora Leigh. A fine copy of Browning's landmark verse novel, in a unique hand-painted binding by Giannini. Single volume, measuring 6.25 x 4.5 inches: [9], 10-334, [4]. Contemporary vellum hand-painted in gilt, green, and red; gilt-ruled beveled boards and spine; rampant lion with shield to front board; foliate decorations to spine and rear board; gold floral endpapers; top edge trimmed, others uncut. Binder's ticket of Giulio Giannini to verso of front free endpaper. Green silk bookmark. Housed in custom half-vellum clamshell box.
[BINDINGS]
First and only edition of this miniature quartet of illustrated storybooks. Each diminutive volume contains two instructive and entertaining tales, from the Italian aeronaut Zambeccari's real-life account of a dangerous hot air balloon expedition to inspirational works of short fiction. As the title suggests, these four storybooks were intended, as a set, to occupy an hour of leisure. Text in French. OCLC locates four institutional holdings, all in Europe; the surviving sets reflect a range of binding styles. Not in Bondy, Spielmann, or Welsh. A near-fine example, complete with fragile publisher's slipcase. Four miniature volumes, measuring 3.25 x 2 inches: 24. Original glazed pink, green, cream and blue cartonnage paper boards, each featuring a central engraved pastedown within embossed arabesque borders; variously colored pastedowns. Two tinted lithographs in each volume, with touches of hand-coloring. Lightest rubbing to boards; scattered foxing; short closed tear to page 13 of third volume. With publisher's arabesque patterned blue paper slipcase. Housed in custom clamshell box.
Gossip, George H. D.; Lipschütz, Samuel (appendix)
Revised edition of this cornerstone work on the game of chess, originally published in 1874. Gossip was an Anglo-American chess player who contributed reliable works to the literature of the game: "As an intellectual pastime, it is incomparably superior to all others; for it possesses the charm of continual variety." Hungarian chess expert Samuel Lipschütz's text revisions and expert addendum, which first appeared in the 1888 edition, helped make this one of the standard opening books of the period. While highly regarded for its content, the book is equally admired for its iconic binding, featuring a blazing red and black chess board on the cover and a gilt-stamped chessboard on the spine. Hooper & Whyld, 228; Betts 13-27. A very good copy, in an extraordinarily bright example of the publisher's binding. Single volume, measuring 8.5 x 7.75 inches: xii, 884, 122. Original forest green pictorial cloth, front board stamped with chess board and decorative surround in red and black, spine with gilt-stamped chessboard. Photo-engraved diagrams throughout text. Expert restoration to spine ends, hinges repaired, occasional stray spot.
[MAPS]
Nineteenth-century walking guide to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, founded in 1838, one of the first planned green spaces in New York City. The gilt-stamped upper board depicts the landmark brownstone Gothic Revival gate at the main entrance to the cemetery. "Objects of Special Interest" include the Firemen's Monument, the Civil War Soldiers' Monument, and the Brooklyn Theatre Fire Monument, as well as the tombs of prominent New Yorkers, among them governor DeWitt Clinton, publisher Horace Greeley, and Broadway impresario William "Billy" Niblo, who hosted parties at his Green-Wood mausoleum before he died. Although the lithographer is not credited, this is a variant of the Snyder & Black Green-Wood map, in continual use since the 1850s. A near-fine example, in splendid mauve cloth boards. Lithographed map, measuring 23.75 x 15.75 inches unfolded, housed in original mauve pictorial cloth boards, stamped and lettered in gilt, measuring 6.75 x 4.75 inches. Three-panel folding list of cemetery sites tipped to front pastedown. Ink ownership signature of "Beulah Wright / Rome / N.Y." Light occasional spotting, short tear to map at fold.
Keller, Arthur Ignatius
Original illustration by American artist Arthur Keller (1866-1924) for William Dean Howells's 1903 collection of essays, Heroines of Fiction. In that work, Howells considers the Victorian clergyman Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel Hypatia, a fictionalized life of the pagan philosopher, set in fourth-century Alexandria. Hypatia was one of the first women to study mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. Murdered by a Christian mob for her outspoken Neoplatonist teachings, she became a symbol for feminists and a martyr for pagans. In Keller's striking portrait, Hypatia's open pose and concentration on her manuscript convey classical self-possession, but her pale skin and tousled ringlets reflect Kingsley's Victorian vision. Howells remarks: "Hypatia is really a young lady of the early eighteen-fifties, of the time when young ladies of her type were crudely called strong-minded. She was a sort of Alexandrian Margaret Fuller." A source of inspiration across centuries, Hypatia most recently served as the subject of the 2009 Spanish film Agora, in which she struggles to save the Library of Alexandria from religious zealots. A fine illustration of a compelling historical (and fictional) figure. Oil on board, measuring 19 x 13.25 inches. Signed "A. I. Keller" in lower right image. Three 2-mm chips to areas of marbling behind figure, a few additional minor chips from framing along edges.
Fortescue-Brickdale, Eleanor
Original watercolor by British artist Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945), first exhibited in her career-making 1901 solo exhibition: "Rarely, if ever has a woman painter made a great reputation as quickly and as thoroughly as Miss Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, whose series of watercolour drawings has, during last month, drawn the whole of artistic London to the Dowdeswell Galleries" (The Artist, June 1901). The young Fortescue-Brickdale was inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite movement of Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais. She studied with John Ruskin as a teenager, and befriended John Byam Shaw, a protégé of Millais, at the Royal Academy, later teaching at Shaw's school of art. An outlier in a male-dominated field, she built a successful career as a fine art painter and book illustrator, becoming the first female member of the Institute of Painters in Oils, and working in sculpture and stained glass as well. Throughout her life, she was drawn to allegorical, historical and romantic themes. Upon her death, the Times memorialized her as "the last survivor of the Pre-Raphaelite painters." Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Ashmolean Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and Leeds City Museums and Art Galleries. The allegorical theme, rich jewel tones, and exquisitely detailed fabrics and foliage of Love and Adversity place the painting among her most successful works in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. The ambiguity of the central figure, an androgynous prisoner abandoned by a receding crowd, together with the redemptive symbolism of the angel and the dove, have invited speculation and debate since the painting's initial showing. One contemporary critic observed: "Miss Brickdale gives delightful proof that symbolic art, which can be the most tiresome thing in the world, can also be lovely and suggestive. It is dead when it tries to revive the dead, but it lives when it is applied to new poetic fancies. Perhaps it will be a natural form of reaction against realism, and against the painters who paint a spade so much more a spade than it really is" (Edith Sichel, "A Woman-painter and Symbolism."Monthly Review 4:12, September 1901). Provenance: W. H. Kendall, 1901; Alister Mathews, Branksome Park, England, 1966; Christie's, New York, June 19, 1990, sale 7102, lot 168, The Estate of E. Maurice Bloch; purchased at the above sale by the present owner. Exhibited: London, Dowdeswell Galleries, 160 New Bond Street, "Such Stuff as Dreams are Made of!" Exhibition of Forty-Five Pictures in Water-Colour by E. Fortescue-Brickdale, June 1901, no. 35; London, Leighton Institute, 1902, no. 19. Literature: Sparrow, Walter Shaw, "On Some Water-Colour Pictures by Miss Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale," The International Studio XIV, 1901, p.37. See also: Nunn, Pamela Gerrish, A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012. An evocative example of late Pre-Raphaelite painting, beautifully preserved. Watercolor, heightened with bodycolor, on artist's board, measuring 20.5 x 13.5 inches, image. Signed with artist's monogram and dated 1900, lower right; verso signed "E.F. Brickdale," titled, and numbered "22," with partial indecipherable pencil notation. Archivally hinged to board, with linen mat and burnished gold wood frame measuring 28 x 21 inches. Verso with slight bands of age toning and tape remnants along edges.
Vallières, Louis de
First edition of this Spanish pocket guide to health and fitness, part of Saturnino Calleja Fernández's "Biblioteca Popular" series. The book offers a visual introduction to calisthenics, featuring dynamic illustrations in which dotted lines indicate movements of the limbs. The prescribed exercises require no equipment, and can be performed anywhere, at any time: "Nuestro sistema, por tanto, carece de aparejos, puesto que cada uno los lleva consigo, pudiendo ejercitarse sin fatiga á la hora que mejor parezca y en el sitio que más convenga." The colorful cover, featuring a muscular woman hoisting a dumbbell and boys swinging from a trapeze, is therefore misleading, but the graphic appeal of this little book is characteristic of the ephemeral educational works for which Saturnino Calleja Fernández was known: the Madrid publisher issued enormous runs of inexpensive, portable volumes to schools, playing a particularly important role in impoverished areas of Spain. OCLC lists only one institutional holding, at El Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, Madrid. A near-fine survival. Single volume, measuring 4.5 x 3 inches: [7], 8-126, [2]. Original color pictorial lithographed boards; rear cover with elaborate publisher's device; spine titled in black with decorative border. Wood-engraved headpiece to preface, forty-one photoengraved black line drawings. Light toning and edgewear.
First edition of this Spanish pocket guide to health and fitness, part of Saturnino Calleja Fernández's "Biblioteca Popular" series. The book offers a visual introduction to calisthenics, featuring dynamic illustrations in which dotted lines indicate movements of the limbs. The prescribed exercises require no equipment, and can be performed anywhere, at any time: "Nuestro sistema, por tanto, carece de aparejos, puesto que cada uno los lleva consigo, pudiendo ejercitarse sin fatiga á la hora que mejor parezca y en el sitio que más convenga." The colorful cover, featuring a muscular woman hoisting a dumbbell and boys swinging from a trapeze, is therefore misleading, but the graphic appeal of this little book is characteristic of the ephemeral educational works for which Saturnino Calleja Fernández was known: the Madrid publisher issued enormous runs of inexpensive, portable volumes to schools, playing a particularly important role in impoverished areas of Spain. OCLC lists only one institutional holding, at El Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, Madrid. A near-fine survival. Single volume, measuring 4.5 x 3 inches: [7], 8-126, [2]. Original color pictorial lithographed boards; rear cover with elaborate publisher's device; spine titled in black with decorative border. Wood-engraved headpiece to preface, forty-one photoengraved black line drawings. Light toning and edgewear.