Jones, Barbara (Drawings) & Jonathan Williams (Texts)
6 inches. [32] pp. including 10 illustrations. Publisher's pictorial jacket over green wrappers, stapled. Inscribed to Kenward Elsmlie by the author on the flyleaf, "a bit of odd grub for Kenward from Col. Williams New Year's 1978 Highlands." Jacket lightly rubbed and smudged, else fine. Number I of Stuart Mills's Aggie Weston's Editions. One of 1,000 copies printed (this copy among the 950 not specially handsewn, numbered, and signed in the colophon). A chapbook containing ten poems, each titled and inspired by strangely named British foods ("Wet Nelly," "Tatty Oggy," and, of course, "Spotted Dick," among them).
[Tom Thumb (i.e., Charles S. Stratton)]
24 pp. Publisher's printed wrappers (both wrappers printed recto and verso). Wrappers creased and lightly chipped. 3/4-inch stain in rear wrapper. Foxing throughout. Good. Second edition of the first biography of Tom Thumb (after the first of 1846), with a pictorial advertisment on the rear wrapper of Barnum's American Museum, where the pamphlet was sold. "General Tom Thumb" was Charles Stratton (1838-1883), a little person from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who became the one of P. T. Barnum's biggest talents and one of the 19th-century's most beloved celebrities. The present edition is updated with American press accounts of Stratton's 1847 return from his recent first European tour and visits to Washington, D.C., Richmond, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
Cunard, Nancy
Bifolium. [4] pp. Inscribed and signed by the author, "for Eugene MacCown from Nancy Cunard Ap. 23. 1944." Early horizontal fold, wrinkling, significant chips and tears at edges, affecting a few characters of text at head of front leaf, moderate toning. Fair. One of 400 copies, this copy unnumbered, of the first printing of a poem Cunard composed while visiting Dorset in March, 1944, "evoking," writes her biographer Lois Gordon, "the terror of one's habitual responses during a raid from the air, sea, or ground" (NANCY CUNARD : HEIRESS, MUSE, POLITICAL IDEALIST [Columbia University Press, 2007], p. 293). Cunard inscribed this copy to her close friend and protégé, the American jazz pianist and painter Eugene McCown, now long broken and removed from his life as a favorite in the Bohemian set of 1920s Paris.
Elevitch, M. D. (ed.); Thornton Wilder, Mark Twain, W. D. Howells, Patrick Brophy, Diana Athill, Allan Seagar, Edward Gorey, Ford Madox Ford, R. W. Lid, Robert Hellman, Anne Halley, Curtis Zahn, and Don Marie
86,[2] pp., containing numerous in-text and full-page illustrations. Pictorial wrappers. Wrappers lightly shelf-worn. Very good. First issue of a short-run literary magazine, including the first (partial) publication of Edward Gorey's story-without-words, LEAVES FROM A MISLAID ALBUM. LEAVES here contains eight full-pages illustrations of 17 that would later be published by Gotham Book Mart in 1972.
Chagall, Marc [art]; Gaston Bachelard [text]; Catherine Stanescu [binding]
36 cm. [17],95,[16] pp. including 96 monochrome plates, plus 24 color plates. Original color lithographic covers not present. In French. Brown morocco, red and tan morocco onlays, pictorially tooled in gilt, spine titled in gilt, turn-ins ruled in gilt, red suede doublures, all edges gilt. Binding signed in gilt by Catherine Stanescu. Housed in a clamshell case, quarter morocco and marbled paper over boards, gilt leather labels, tan suede doublures. Paper edges of case rubbed, joints and leather edges of case moderately scuffed and worn, else very good. Binding and contents of book fine. In 1930, Paris art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard commissioned Marc Chagall to produce a suite of etchings illustrating the Hebrew Bible. The project precipitated Chagall's two-month visit the following year to the Holy Land, where he and his family were guests of Meir Dizengoff, founder and mayor of Tel Aviv. Chagall biographer Jackie Wullschlager describes the object of Chagall's journey as "not external stimulus but an inner authorization from the land of his ancestors, to plunge into his work on the Bible illustrations" (p. 349). The trip was transformative: art historian Jacques Lassaigne wrote that Chagall told him that Palestine gave him "the most vivid impression he had ever received," and Chagall stated in an address first delivered at Mount Holyoke College in 1943, "in the East I found unexpectedly the Bible and a part of my very own being" (Harshav, p. 77). The result was two series of etchings and lithographs, the first published in 1956 and the present second series in 1960. Franz Meyer has described Chagall's Bible illustrations as having "the same religious force as the Bible itself" (p. 393) and their interplay with the Biblical text as an "astonishing variety of word and image, of visual representation and nonvisual suggestion" (p. 388).From 1931 to 1959 - during three of the most significant decades of modern Jewish history - Chagall worked on the illustrations, producing 65 etchings before Vollard's death in 1939 and a final 40 for the first series between 1952 and 1956. Tériade had taken over publication from Vollard and in 1956 issued two uncolored and one colored signed and numbered editions of the series. Tériade issued reproductions of the etchings together with 29 lithographs as Nos. 33/34 double issue of VERVE magazine. In 1958 and 1959, Chagall resumed the project to illustrate "themes generally not treated" in the earlier work. Tériade published the new series in 1960 as the 37/38 double number of VERVE, the magazine's final issues. This second series contains 96 monochrome etchings reproduced in heliogravure (photogravure) by Draeger Frères and 24 color lithographic plates and a color lithographic cover (not present here) printed by Mourlot Frères. An English-language American edition was published concurrently. The present copy of DESSINS was finely bound by master bookbinder Catherine Stanescu (1908-1998), gracefully incorporating illustrations and design elements of Chagall's work in gilt and morocco onlay. Stanescu was born in Romania to a prominent family and married Ion Stanescu, who served as Royal Treaurer before the Communist takeover in 1946. Both escaped Romania but were separated for two years, during which period Catherine lived in Switzerland and studied French-style bookbinding. After migrating to the U.S. and settling in New York, she progressed in the artStanescu studied French-style bookbinding in Switzerland after fleeing her native Romania during the Communist takeover. In New York, where she eventually settled, Stanescu founded a studio and developed a devoted following of students, private and institutional clients for book restoration, and collectors of her artistic bindings. Benjamin Harshav (ed.), MARC CHAGALL ON ART AND CULTURE (Stanford University Press, 2003).Franz Meyer, MARC CHAGALL : LIFE AND WORK (Harry N. Abrams, [1964]).Jackie Wullschlager, CHAGALL : A BIOGRAPHY (Knopf, 2008
[Gorey, Edward]
Pen and ink and wash on paper. Printed titles and lyrics pasted to liner sheets. Approximately 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches (images), 15 x 14 1/2 inches (sheets). Cover art dated, "26.i.76-3.ii.76" (i.e., begun January 26, 1976, and completed February 3, 1976). Crop marks and other notes on all three sheets in the hand of the artist. Liner-notes sheets mounted to board. Tape remnants and residue in left margin of cover sheet (not affecting image), remnants of framing tape at top edge of cover image sheet verso; light soiling and minor stains on verso. Light soiling at edges of liner-notes sheets. The original art accompanying the album of Vienna-born composer Michael Mantlers jazz-rock settings of six of Edward Gorey's tales, sung by British psychedelic rock pioneer Robert Wyatt: "The Sinking Spell," "The Object-Lesson," "The Insect God," "The Doubtful Guest," "The Remembered Visit," and "The Hapless Child." The cover art includes images derived from each of these stories, making it the only known example of an original work showing motifs of multiple books of Goreys from the 1950s and 1960s in one place.
[Gorey, Edward]
Image 8 x 10 inches, sheet 10 1/4 x 12 inches. Pen and ink on paper. Signed with "EG" monogram. Traces of pencil guide lines in margins, artist's corrections in white tempera. Pencil measurement inscription in lower margin. Light stains in margins (largest 3/8 x 1/4 inches), most visible in lower margin; tiny stains (not exceeding 1/12 inch) in lower portion portion of image. Very good to near fine. Between 1992 and 1997, the PBS-affiliated SIGNALS gift catalog issued ten limited-edition lithographic prints from art commissioned from Edward Gorey. The present drawing, made for LITHOGRAPH No. 4 (first published in 1994), later traveled in ELEGANT ENIGMAS, the first international exhibition of Gorey's works, curated by Karen Wilkin. It appears as the final image in the exhibition's catalogue and the as the sole image on the rear panel of its dust jacket. Eventually entitled "Gazebo," the drawing presents a 19th-century séance taking place outdoors in winter. Objects float around the participantsamong them, leeks, steaks, a trumpet, an open book, a Japanese fan, and smoked glassesas ghosts and an alligator carrying children on its back skate on the surrounding ice and a butler arrives with tea.
[Gorey, Edward]
Watercolor and ink on paper. First two images approximately 3 1/3 x 7 2/3 inches, sheets 5 x 10 inches; third image approximately 2 1/4 x 6 3/4 inches, sheet 4 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches. Traces of graphite guide lines; graphite inscriptions, "L" and "R," on first and second sheets, respectively. Colored illustrations for Peter L. Bernsteins article, "The New Religion of Risk Management," in the March-April 1996 issue of HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW. The first two images show Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat bearing lighted torches, as figures of "old religion" walk off into the night. The third shows the same Enlightenment thinkers behind three painted wheels inscribed with "3," "7," and "9." Responding to a question of how fairly to divide money wagered on an interrupted game of dice, Pascal and Fermat together solved an old mathematical puzzle, laying the foundation of probability theory. But today, Bernstein asks, "Have we replaced old-world superstitions with a dangerous reliance on numbers?"
Price, E. Hoffmann
[5],208,[1] pp. Publisher's black cloth, spine titled in gilt, in pictorial dust jacket. Inscribed and signed by the author on dedication leaf verso. Jacket lightly rubbed, else fine. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Warmly inscribed by the author to a fellow World War I veteran and alumnus of the American Expeditionary Forces University at Beaune, France, "For Red & Elizabeth Palmer with good wishes & Affectionate Thoughts & Memories of A.E.F. [i.e., American Expeditionary Forces] University Beaune - Beaune - pas bon Beaune! E. Hoffmann Price also known as Tao Fan| Mar 12 1969," and signed with a stamp of his Chinese chop. The first hardcover collection of the author's short stories. Jacket designed by Lee Brown Coye. 2007 copies printed. Derleth 93. Jaffery 100.
Bowles, Paul [et al.]
13 ff. including in-text designs and illustrations and mounted photograph. Original pictorial wrappers, side-stitched. Near fine. Bardo Matrix's STARSTREAMS Poetry Series No. 5, numbered 208 of an edition of 500 copies. Ira Cohen published under the Bardo Matrix imprint throughout the 1970s in Kathmandu, collaborating with Angus Maclise and other fellow expatriates with the help of Nepali craftsmen and woodblock artsts. In his account of the press he wrote for the May/June 1995 issue of NEW OBSERVATIONS, "The Great Rice Paper Adventure Kathmandu, 1972-1977," Cohen highlights the process and production of NEXT TO NOTHING: "In 1976 Paul Bowles sent me his poem, Next to Nothing, written specially for Bardo Matrix. Although I knew that Paul expressed a preference for an unadorned presentation of the text with little or no graphics, I ended up using six different design elements by six different artists. Beginning with a verifax collage on the cover by Maya who assembled a glove, razor blade, hairpin, emblematic patches including in eagle, several stars and a butterfly rising on the horizon and ending with a Kufic design supplied by Paul on the back cover, there was also a skull colophon drawn by Lee Baarslag from a human skull I had found in Kathmandu, a collage by Dana Young tipped in as a photographic print, an elegant geometric design by Sydney Hushhour, who was visiting from San Francisco and Petra Vogt's rapidograph drawing, Bone Ship Passing."
Rimbaud, Arthur; André Masson [artist]
Folio. [2],140,[3] pp. including 10 original etchings by André Masson: 9 double-page aquatints in colors and one single-page aquatint printed 9 times, each in a different tint and section heading. Signed by the artist and by the president and vice president of the Société de Femmes Bibliophiles. Loose signatures in original printed wrappers, portfolio (maroon cloth and paper over boards, silver spine title), and clamshell case (blue cloth, printed paper spine label, colored patterned endpapers). Light toning at edges of wrappers, minor stains (not exceeding 1/4 inch) at foot of front wrapper panel, portfolio lightly scuffed, case lightly rubbed. Internally near fine, untrimmed. The twenty-first book published by the elite international society of women bibliophiles, Les Cent-Une, printed in 140 copies on large Rives paper, numbered I-CI for members of the society and 1-39 for collaborators in the project. This is copy VIII, printed for Princess Matila Ghyka (i.e., Eileen O'Conor Ghyka, 1897-1963). The work is a sumptuous production of Rimbaud's poem in prose and verse with abstract tinted and colored aquatints by André Masson, with the text printed at the presses of Fequet et Baudier and the plates at the Atelier Crommelynck.Patrick Cramer, ANDRÉ MASSON : THE ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, 50.
[1],iii,59 pp., including several in-text illustrations. Original pictorial wrappers, stapled. Ownership signature in title page. Light wear at edges. Near fine. A detailed bibliography of books, journal and newspaper articles, plays, and phonograph records relating to the performing arts in Mexican and Mexican-American contexts. The editor, Jorge A. Huerta, Professor Emeritus at University of California, San Diego, is a leading scholar in Chicano theater and a playwright and theater director. In 1971, Huerta and his wife and six fellow undergraduate students at University of California, Santa Barbara, founded El Teatro de la Esperanza, whose name appears at the center of a sun on the cover of the present work.
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