Dibdin, Charles. Illustration by Isaac Cruikshank
18th Century broadside of song lyrics and hand-colored etching of foxhunting scene. Uncommon in physical form. Dibdin (1745-1814) was a singer-songwriter nearly two centuries prior to the elevation of that combination. (There were always composers who publicly performed their own music, of course.) He was more versatile than that, though. He also wrote operas, novels, and plays. He collaborated with legendary theater manager David Garrick, and served for a time as the Music Director at Covent Garden. The "Oddities", for which this song was written, was performed in 1789. Visible part of broadside under glass and matting, 36 by 24 cm. With wood frame and matting, 50 by 36.5 cm. The frame is of a burled cherry, we believe, the matting, green, with a thin white beveling, and we believe most would find the framing attractive and worth retaining.
The Midnight Frolic ran from 1915 to 1922. The legendary producer Florenz Ziegfeld observed that many a member of the audience of his Follies would then proceed to go to a nightclub elsewhere, so Ziegfeld staged a second show on the rooftop of The New Amsterdam Theatre, the home of the Follies, beginning at midnight after the curtain had come down on the Follies below. The Frolic caught on immediately, with some of the same talent which headlined the Follies, such as W. C. Fields, Will Rodgers, Eddie Cantor, etc. etc. The Frolic was more like a regular nightclub, though, with the patrons allowed to dance during the intermissions, and liquor and light refreshments served, and heartier food available if so requested. And to spare the Frolics' patrons fatigued hands from all the clapping, Ziegfeld came up with the notion of giving them the souvenir hammer which they could strike on their table instead to convey their approbation. The Frolic came to an end after the advent of prohibition when alcohol could no longer be legally served. We would imagine that literally thousands of hammers were given out, but as the case with freebies in general, they have a way of vanishing because the original owners place little value on them, and their direct heirs, even less. So while there are other hammers out there, they are not so easy to come by. The hammer gimmick has on occasion been imitated, but not often. Just as the Midnight Frolic is but a vague memory, fondly recreated in but a few of the films about or inspired by Ziegfeld -- most notably, "The Great Ziegfeld", released in 1936, and less historically, in "Easter Parade", which takes place in 1912, a few years before the Frolic was inaugurated, but of course featuring the music of Irving Berlin, who was one of the major contributors to the Follies. The hammer is 16 cm long, the anvil part, 5.5 cm across, and about 2 cm in diameter.
Sorel, Edward
Two pieces, one being the original artwork, a combination of watercolor and pen-and-ink, by legendary living cartoonist, Edward Sorel, the other piece being a printed paper mobile, when assembled, with three sides, prepared by the New York Times, with the printed message, "Books are fun". which used part of this Sorel artwork, combining it with another whimsical Sorel design. N.d., circa 1970s. The original artwork shows an extra-long and narrow biplane (stacked wings) such as was used in the early days of aviation, with a width of a single seat, but instead of one or two seat cavities, this one has a dozen, each here occupied by Arabs, or men in Arab headress, and each of them assiduously reading an open book. Even the pilot has his head in a book. Beneath is a desert setting, with mountains in the distance, and a mosque, replete with towers and turrets, and a smattering of palm trees. The mobile used just the plane with the dozenb men focused on their reading. Instead of a physical setting, the bottom of the printed mobile features three buses, each triple decker and yet short in length, with five to seven windows front to back on the shown side, and all the passengers, but not the driver, staring at their open books. The bus is meant loosely to resemble the London double decker bus, but adding an enclosed floor, plus there are passengers sitting on the open-air rooftop. We do not know for a certainty whether Sorel did the illustration specifically for the mobile project, or whether the artwork was later seized upon for borrowing part of its imagery, but we tend to think it was. Regardless, both the original artwork and the printed mobile are fun, whimsical pieces. The artwork is on paper mounted onto card, with a wax paper overlay which is easily pulled back. The paper with the artwork measures 23 by 43 cm. The printed mobile is unused and thus flat, measuring 31 by 41.5 cm, not counting tabs to secure it closed when set up. It has two fold which would serve as edges when assembled, and there are three round holes at the top to insert string to dangle the mobile from a ceiling. The artwork has some brown staining. The mobile is unused and like new.
This commemorative tchotchke was issued to celebrate the 150th performance of the play, "The Girl I Left Behind Me", co-written by theater impresario David Belasco and Franklin Fyles, and the production that inaugurated the Empire Theatre, located on Broadway between 40th and 41st Street, in 1893. The theater was owned by Charles Frohman, who also produced the play, which was later adapted into a silent movie in 1915. The cold metal statuette is of a woman looking into the distance with binoculars. The women is wearing an open jacket over a blouse and a pleated dress that touches the base -- the 1890s conception of casual wear. The metal is painted gray. The woman is about 20 cm tall, and the base is 9 cm in diameter. Condition: paint has flaked off in spots throughout, as typical with cold metal, with more loss over the skirt. The paint loss at the base makes reading one line of relief lettering somewhat difficult.
Roedlich, Hieronymus Franz. Introduction by A. Hirt
Beautiful plate book demonstrating the technique of laying stone floors such as the author encountered in Italy. 4to. 26.5 by 21.5 cm. 27, [1], 12 plate leaves, containing two hand-colored copper engravings on each of the rectos. Scarce, with only copies recorded on OCLC First Search at the Getty, UVA, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Sachsische Landesbibliothek, and there is no indication any of these copies had coloring. Modern half morocco binding tight, clean, attractive. Leaves have some light staining and soiling, but nonethelss come off as clean, and the plates are bright, appealing.
Attractive, and highly collectible, equestrian equipment catalogue. Oblong, 19 by 22.5 cm. 180 pp. Fold-out frontis b/w illustration, title with chromo tinting, two text pages, pages 5-160 plates showing the company's wares, almost all of which are chromolithgraphic, and final last pages, on a mustard colored paper stock, a price list. Chromos generally are quite metallic in their finish, with bright gold and silver commonly featured. Of chromos, one page of harnass trimmings, 77 show a still horse in profile, and these are displaying harnasses, 45 are of saddles, two per page or plate, and these feature a lot of orange, red, brown in terms of colors, not to mention black and gray. Other items are promoted, but without chromolithographic illustration: horse collars, gig saddles, bridles, buggy lines, and other paraphernalia. Rear wrap has illustration of the company's factory. Only two institutional holdings evidenced on OCLC First Search of the company's catalogue for this year, and a small number of holdings for other years, earlier and later. A later catalogue of the company was reprinted in more recent times, which we believe corroborates our assertion as to the desirability of the company's catalogues. The front cover of this catalogue has a vignette of a white horse in profile, rendered in relief, and the lettering below also in relief. Condition: wraps with some scuffing and light soiling. Price list with prices written in in red ink. Otherwise, tight, bright, clean. A lovely copy that could be regarded as near fine, perhaps fine, excepting the enumerated issues. Cloth Spine. Heavy Card for boards
Mac Orlan, Pierre. Illustrated by [Marcel] Vertès (1895-1961)
One of 600 copies in limited edition. This copy is unnumbered. Folio, 38 by 28 cm. Half title, title, iv, 45. [2] pp. With 12 lithographs by Vertes, and these have very occasional touches of color. A work concerning female domestic servants, and serving up light erotica, and fillip of naughtiness. The text is driven by the Vertès artwork, and not the other way around. Condition: Light soiling to pink wraps. Some edge wear to the wraps, now protected with mylar covering. Hinge in several places, when one opens the book widely, looks as if loosening or opening, probably a gap created by the cutting out a sheet of tissue, evidence of which is still visible in narrow strips. Otherwise, interior clean, binding tight.
Grosz, George
Signed, with a modest watercolored vignette by Grosz, on the FFEP or first blank! Inscribed to the family of Leo Sauvage. Sauvage was a well-known French journalist -- he was the New York correspondent for the Parisian newspaper, Le Figaro, between 1950 and 1975, and later the drama critic for the publication, The New Leader, an American magazine associated with the Socialist Party. The inscription was done with blue and red paint, and a fairly thick brush was used for most of it. While the cursive most definitely doesn't come close to qualifying as calligraphy, Grosz did apply decorative touches to the letters of his name, with paintbrush bristles -- or so we think he had in mind -- emanating like twigs from the thicker brushstrokes of his letters, and his two capital Gs having a modest swirly flourish. Below his name are crisscrossing paintbrushes. At the bottom is written "Huntington May 5C". We can't say whether this was meant to signify merely May 5 or May 55, the "C" being inadvertent or a 5 not fully formed. Facing, on the FEP, is a black and white photo of Grosz, surely taken around the time of the inscription, when Grosz was in his sixties. Huntington is the Long Island town where Grosz lived the last 12 years of his life, and at the time of the book's issuance. 4to. 28 by 20 cm. Condition: Cloth spine with chip upper spine extremity, about 1 cm in height. Leaves within are clean, with normal age toning evident around edges. DJ torn the entire vertical length of the front joint, and two short closed tears emanating from this tear. DJ spine also chipped on top, just like cloth below, and it has a larger chip at the bottom, with a jagged edge top to the chip. Because virtually all the DJ does survive, we grade it good, despite the tears and chips.
Arlington, L. C.; With a Pien by Mei Lan-fang and a Foreward by H. A. Giles
4to. 29 by 23 cm. 177 + xli pp. No. 550 of 750 limited edition. Signed by author in ink on prelim blank. Errata slip tipped in by title page. Plates are bright, eye-popping at times, and clean, with depictions of costume, props, characters and dramatic scenes. Also a highly readable treatise on all aspects of the subject. Stunning peacock design to boards, with same design carried forward, with texture, to endpapers. Spine sunned so now closer to yellow/brown than green, and otherwise soiled. Slight looseness to binding. Prelims, fore-edges with light foxing, but generally the copy is clean.
Robida, A., illustrator. Text by Georges Gustave Toudouze
Folio, 37 by 30 cm. 80, [2] pp. Charismatic color illustrated front cover, with lavish use of gilt impressed into cloth, and rich greens and reds of king's costume such as one would find in a painting of the early Renaissance. Lavish color illustrations, generally full page every other page, by Robida, of the larger-than-life Gallic Renaissance king, remembered for waging war nearly non-stop, for having welcomed Leonardo da Vinci to his protection, for having acquired the Mona Lisa from da Vinci, and perhaps most of all, as an ambitious builder, most notably, of Chambord, the immense palatial confection that is a riot of towers, crockets and turrets in the Loire Valley, and also the largest royal palace, based on square footage, in France -- larger than Versailles based on this criterion. Condition: Light soiling of the gray cloth here and there, especially by rear joint. Some cloth blistering, most pronounced by front joint. A tiny pinprick hole of cloth, rear cover. Perhaps a slight shake to the text block's adherence to the binding. Moderate age toning to the leaves .
Rigaud, Jacques
Beautiful panoramic view of formal gardens, the chateau which belonged to the Duc Conde, with a good amount of human activity -- aristocrats strolling, gardeners, etc. -- and a dog, to add some interest and provide a sense of scale. The chateau still stands. Exposed part of print: 26 by 48 cm. With matting, 36 by 59 cm. The hand-coloring greatly enhances the visual appeal of this print which is most often encountered in black and white. A band of black has been painted around the perimeter. We can't explain why this was done. The caption below is also obscured by the uneven application of black paint, although much of it remains legible. The core pictorial image isn't significantly afflicted by this blacking, although it does invade a bottom edge here and there. Much of the unwanted black can be removed with an ordinary eraser, and we suspect that virtually all of it can be cleaned up with a professional acid bath.
A beautiful Ancien Regime manuscript for something one would not expect someone would apply so much ornamental artistry to -- a list of the 425 or so members of the Garde Ecossaise, or the Scottish Guard. The Garde Ecossaise, founded in 1418, came to serve as the Royal Bodyguard. As the name would imply, it was initially comprised of Scottish soldiers, but by the 18th century it was entirely made up of Frenchmen, as is obvious from many of the names entered into this manuscript. The Garde Ecossaise was disbanded in 1789 as a casualty of the Revolution, but was revived with the Restoration. The manuscript lists the officers by rank, followed by many pages listing members by the year that they joined, beginning in 1744, so as to inform about their seniority within the outfit. 16mo. 148 by 95 mm. Unpaginated, title, followed by 57 pages. Title page with a Rococo-style cartouche as the centerpiece, surrounded by a border evoking leaves and flowers. The following leaves abound in small floral ornaments, always in the painted borders but also as separations between sections, as top or bottom pieces within the borders, and often by each of the names listed on the page. These ornaments might incorporate other things such as an urn or a flame. While there is nothing singularly arresting about any of the ornaments, it is their cumulative effect that should register and make this manuscript something to be cherished when its original purpose, and the people listed therein, were long gone. Binding is full mottled calf, with gilt ruled borders and diaper gilt design on spine -- a semi-abstract floral repeat. Or what is known, somewhat esoterically, as "a la grotesque". Condition: light, thin surface loss to calf along joints from opening and closing of book. Otherwise, a finely preserved manuscript.
N.d., either 1975 or 1976, with models of the 1976 or 1977 editions. (This can be inferred since these were the only years all these models were on offer.) Oblong, 16.5 by 22.5 cm. Eleven transparent/translucent glassine plastic overlays representing car models, excepting the last of the eleven which contains stripes of seven basic colors. Seven underlays for car top colors -- these are on a card stock, textured to simiulate. Twenty card stock sheets for car's predominant color to be applied to chassis, these with a metallic finish as perfectly represents car body paint. Spiral on three sides to play with different color combinations applied to ten different models on offer by Chevrolet, including its Caprice, the Impala, the Monte Carlo Landua Coupe, the Malibu, the Chevette, the Vega, etc. Scarce, with no institutional copies found of this color selector, and very few institutional holdings of other car brand color selectors and the like evidenced on OCLC First Search. Condition: light wear, some light soiling of the card base/cover. On card base or cover, written in ink is "Do Not Remove", something surely written by a dealership. Note that there is no proper cover, and we believe there probably was never such. This was issued for the use at dealerships, not for customers to take home.
Lambert, André, author, artist, etc.
No. 179 of a total limitation of 401 copies, this one being one of 350 copies on vélin d'Arches. Oblong, 23 by 28 cm. Unpaginated, but 12 pages, after which there are 13 gatherings, each with three pages of text and one color plate, the plate being on a separate leaf. Yet another gathering with a table of contents on its top page, and publishing information contained in small print on one inside page. Each of the gatherings is devoted to a different god -- Jupiter, Juno [Junon], Neptune, Pluto [Pluton], etc., with the final gathering covering Bacchus, Amour abnd Psyche, who weren't full-fledged gods. Wraps. Gatherings within loose. Chemise, with marbled paper pastedown on boards and spine, cloth running along joints. Slipcase, with marbled paper pastedown.
Mauzan, Archille
Fun perpetual calendar, with adjustments to day of week, the day number and the month changed by revolving wheels projecting oiut on the sides. N.d., Circa 1930. Measuring 37 by 27 cm, and constructed of heavy thick card stock, with two larger pieces pressed together to hold the wheels securely, with metal tacks in the corners. The Aurora company was founded in Turin in 1919. The company is still in business and remains a leading manufacturer of fine pens and desk accessories. Archille Mauzan (1883-1952) was a French-born commercial artist who was known for his posters. During the span of his career he based himself in Paris and South America as well as Turin and Milan. In this perpetual calendar, he depicts a bald everyman upon whose forehead a hand is writing "Ricordate", which means, "Remember". Condition: light wear.
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