Fowler, Deborah
Manuscript document; 5 1/2 x 7; single sheet of laid paper, filled in brown ink; red wax seal to lower right corner (a bit dry and crumbly); old crease lines and a few minor spots; in very good condition.A receipt, written and signed by one Deborah Fowler, attesting to receiving forty five mild [sic.] dollars, "it being in full of a legasee which my Honoured Father gave unto mee it being for one Cow and twenty five Silver mild dollars which was Given me by will I say Received." Interestingly enough, research has shown that Deborah and many other female citizens of the region did not conform to the womens roles in the 18th and 19th centuries, which were centered around home and childrearing. In this case, most of their men were involved in maritime-related trades - off to sea, building sailing vessels, etc. - and as a matter of practicality, women, who had the desire, could take on societal responsibilities, which would not be normally tolerated in most communities in the country. After the onset of the Revolution, Deborah Fowler would open and operate a highly-successful bakery, which would be adjacent to a house, which she also single-handedly owned. There is little doubt where the initial investment for the business had come from.
Abraham Bell & Son
Three documents, printed and partially filled in manuscript; approx. 6 x 12; illustrated with small engravings; a few small nicks to edges and mild age-toning; in very good condition.Abraham Bell (1778 - 1856) was born in a prominent Quaker family in Northern Ireland. Immigrating to New York in 1797, he co-founded Abraham Bell & Company with several partners, of which he would become the sole owner and which would be renamed Abraham Bell & Son in 1844. A shipping firm and commissions merchant, it imported and exported a variety of commodities, though it specialized in the export of Southern cotton to the British Isles. During the potato famine of the 1840s, Bell transported thousands of immigrants from Ireland. The three current bills addressed the shipping, via various vessels, of bales of cotton to Liverpool, rosin to Glasgow, and embroideries to Richmond.
Barnes, Claude T.
First edition, n. d. (1930s); 5 1/4 x 3 1/2; pp. [4]; textured blue wraps, printed in black; minor wear to edges and corners; in near fine condition.An amusing and quite uncommon poem by, then, one of Utah's most published authors, it extolled the virtues of an old privy, presumably the one outside his childhood home, of which he said: "Who knows the darksome stories you could tell; Of lovely forms exposed before your gaze." Appearing as an afterthought, the last few lines of the booklet mention that the privy still stands and that Black Widow spiders like to hide in privies and bite people. OCLC lists one copy at Brigham Young; none other in the trade. Claude Barnes (1884 - 1968) was a prolific author, lawyer, businessman, and naturalist.
Various
Five manuscripts and one document printed and partially filled in manuscript, 1863 - 1864; various sizes and formats; condition varies from near fine, with minor wear, to good, with spotting and small nicks to edges.An interesting group of Civil War material, the papers were written and signed by various commanding officers and / or Captain Joseph Shultz and were all related to Captain Shultz and his 111th Illinois Infantry Regiment, Company K, during the Civil War. One was a camp and garrison equipage list with an accompanying note, in which Captain Shultz certified that the listed items "became worn and worthless and were abandoned on the march from Chattanooga to Resaca, Georgia in the month of May 1864 " (The Battle of Resaca would be fought during that month). There were also two manuscript "Form 30s" with lists of actual savings of food and equipment, and invoices and receipts.
Linnas, Anu, Tiina, and Epp
Printed document; 14 x 8 1/2; single sheet, text to recto only; old crease line through the middle, else minor wear; in very good or better condition.Karl Linnas (1919 - 1987) was an Estonian-American, tried in absentia by the Soviet Government and sentenced to death in 1962 for allegedly serving as commandant of a Nazi concentration camp in Tartu in the early 1940s and for personally executing civilians, including small children. In the meantime, after WWII, he had spent time in Displaced Persons camps in Germany and had immigrated to the US in 1951, becoming a citizen in 1960. In 1979 he was charged by US immigration officials with providing false statements, in order to enter the US. In 1981, he was stripped of his US citizenship for having lied about his ties to the Nazis. In 1986, a federal appeals court upheld his deportation order and in April of that year, he was imprisoned, while awaiting the result of his final appeal. In 1987, he was flown to the Soviet Union, where he would die in a prison hospital in ST. Petersburg three months later. The current circular was created by his three daughters in August of 1986, while he was in prison awating deportation. It described a conspiracy between the Justice Department and the KGB to fabricate evidence and implored people to write to their senators in Karl's support and to contribute to their father's defense fund.
Chukovskii, K.
Sixth, expanded edition, 1 of 5000 copies; 9 1/2 x 6 1/4; pp. [5], 6-165, [3]; pictorial wraps, designed by Evgenii Belukha; illustrated with portrait frontis of the author; rebacked, with several repairs to edges of wraps; in good to very good condition.Hailed as the Russian equivalent of Dr. Seuss, beloved poet andf author Korney Chukovsky (1882 - 1969) would be the second one to translate and popularize Walt Whitman in his country, while he was still in his early 20s. The first one would be one of giants of the Silver Age Konstantin Balmont (1867 - 1942),whom Chukovsky would consider a life-long rival and would mercilessly criticize his translations of Whitman. In fact, Korney dedicated part of his current work to specifically lambast Balmont's "Shoots of Grass" (his translation of "Leaves of Grass"). The other sections of the book featured his own translation of parts of "Leaves of Grass," as well as a biography of Walt, etc. Ultimately, Balmont would be mostly forgotten as a translator of Whitman, while Chukovsky's name would become synonymous with the latter's presence in Russian poetry.Evgenii Belukha (1889 - 1943), who illustrated the wraps, was a renowned artist and graphic designer of the early 20th century, who would also be remembered for his porcelain Soviet propaganda paintings.
Gurev, V. V.; [Translated by] Bernstein, Edward
First English edition; 8 1/2 x 5 1/2; pp. [3], 6-48; brown wraps, printed in black; a bit of age-toning to margins of wraps; small loss of paper to tail of spine; in very good condition.Introduced in Russia in 1656 by British Quaker George Fox, Quakerism and Quakers would be prosecuted as early as 1689, for being "religious individuals who challenged earthly powers in the name of personal experience of the divine." Through the 1700s, religious dissenters called "Quaker Maidens" would be routinly exiled to Siberia. The current work was written in 1881 by Russian Orthodox priest Vasilii Gurev and was first published in the Ruskii Vestnik journal - the latter being an ultra-conservative, anti-foreign-tendency paper. According to Gurev and partially based on Imperial records, partially on research, and partially on word-of-mouth stories, the book showed that "the women prisoners, who were banished to Siberia in the early part of the eighteenth century , were none other than members of a strictly Russian sect, entirely Russian in origin and characteristics." Uncommon, with a few copies at institutions and none other in the trade.
Alfred Andersen & Co.
First edition, n. d. (ca 1900); 4 x 3; pp. [20]; chromolithographed wraps; illustrated with engravings and lithographed plates; spotting mostly to back wrap; tiny nicks to tips of spine; in very good condition.Alfred Andersen founded his company in 1893, marketing household items and utensils and pattenting rosette, wafer, and heart-shaped waffle irons. He was actually not a manufacturer, choosing instead to job out the casting of his wares, but he was nevertheless, very successful. The current little booklet contained various recipes to go with his inventions, including Creamed Oysters on Rosettes, Fruit Sandwiches, and Krumb Kake.
Church, Thomas D.; Vinson, M. A.
An architectural layout of the interior of the exposition floor, with booths, facilities, etc. numbered and sections subtitled; 13 x 8 1/2; old vertical fold lines; age-toning to verso only; in very good condition.An unrecorded piece of the San Francisco Bay Area's history, it was created by the pioneer landscape architect, who had founded the Modernist garden design, known as the "California Style." Thomas Dolliver Church (1902 - 1978) studied at UC Berkeley, Harvard, and the American Academy in Rome, before setting up practice in San Francisco in 1933. He would reportedly create over 2000 private gardens around California and 24 other states. He would work on campus master plans for Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and other institutions. He would also design the grounds of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, the Embassy of the United States in Havana, the General Motors Research Laboratory in Detroit, etc.
Black Student Union
First edition; 8 1/2 x 5 1/2; pp. [3], 4-52; card stock, off-white pictorial wraps, decorated in black; illustrated with numerous photographs and drawings; light age-toning to margins of wraps; a small spot from a removed book shop label to front wrap; in very good condition.The Black Student Union of Stanford University was founded in 1967 as a means to unite African-American students, in the aftermath of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, the Hough Riot in Cleveland, and the Newark and Detroit Rebellions. Its first meeting was held on Sunday, February 26,1967, with guest speakers revolutionary poet and scholar Amiri Baraka and SF State Black Student Union leader Jimmy Garrett. Determined to maintain a connection to the national Black Liberation Movement, the organization would later welcome as speakers Dr. Martin L. King Jr. and Bobby Seale, co-founder and Chairman of the Black Panther Party, among others. The current journal, the only issue published, was released in November of 1967 and contained poetry, essays, stories, and illustrations.
Lieutenant Nowosielski, Sophie (Nowosielska, Zofja)
First edition; 7 1/2 x 5; pp. [7]; 10-124; beige pictorial wraps; illustrated from photographs, including frontis; a tiny nick to tail of spine; mild creasing to corners; n about very good condition.An uncommon memoir, it told the story of a young Polish woman, who served during WWI. Sophie was a tomboy from a wealthy, well-educated family, who, inspired by her grandfather's tales of 19th-century Polish heroines and by her father and brother being called to serve in the Austrian Army in 1914, ran away from home to join a Polish legion fighting for the reunification of Poland. She would be promptly send back home to her mother, but would eventually serve in the Polish Women's Voluntary Legion as a Lieutenant.
Fields, Bryant W.
A scrapbook of photographs, drawings, newspaper clippings, letters, telegrams, company documents, etc., 1890s - 1940s; 11 1/2 x 10 1/2; pp. [74], mostly recto only; sheets housed in a contemporary, tri-ring binder; many of the photographs subtitled in manuscript; some of the sheets with small cuts at perforations; occasional spotting and edge-wear; overall in very good condition.Assembled by a long-term employee and later, executive officer, in Kansas City, Missouri and San Francisco, of the Postal Telegraph - Cable Company, the scrapbook contained an interesting glimpse into the history of the only viable competitor to Western Union in the United States at the end of the 19th century. The company was founded in the 1880s by Irish-American industrialist John William Mackay (1831 - 1902), who had amassed a vast fortune in silver mining in the Comstock Lode. Bryant Fields, the compiler of the current scrapbook, had begun working for the Mackay venture in its early years at the age of just 14 (there is a studio photograph of him at the start of his employment). Some of the assembled images included storefronts of the Postal Telegraph Company aross several states, a 1926 hole-digger and pole-setter machinery and operators across the desolate Arizona desert on the Los Angeles - Texas line, a submarine cable repair outfit, employees inside the Salt Lake City station, and many more. There were also personal photographs of trips of the Fields Family. Other items included several manuscript- and typed company lists of authorized positions and salaries, telegrams, clipped newspaper articles and cartoons, and so on.
Coffee, Dr. W. O.
Four items - a letter, a pamphlet, and two personalized envelopes (one unused); letter - single sheet of the doctor's stationary, typed to recto only, old fold lines; pamphlet - 5 3/4 x 3 1/2, pp. [4], illustrated with a drawing, small chip to upper corner, else very minor wear; overall in very good condition.Even among the miriad of frauds and quacks in the late 19th- and early 20th - centuries, Dr. Coffee held a special place of his own. Setting up shop in Des Moines, he operated his "Eye and Ear Infirmary" from the 1890s until 1927, without a medical license, and for that matter, without any compunction, as it would eventually be revealed that he employed women without any medical training to diagnose ailments and furnish treatments. He also enjoyed a brisk mail-order business, bombarding unsuspecting citizens with letters, touting his magical potions, treatments, and cures, then mailing the said cures once the addressee responded. He also wrote a book on his Absorption Treatment for eyes, which would receive a well-researched and thoroughly-scathing review by author and investigative journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams. Adams would discover that Dr. Coffee had used German Professor Haab's legitimate work "External Diseases of the Eye" to plagiarize illustrations and use them in his own book, but assign completely different diagnoses based on the images.One of the above-mentioned letters was the current one, apparently not the first one sent to one Mr. J. W. Macy, in which Dr. Coffee urged him to fill in a symptom questionare, through wich the doctor would diagnose his eyes remotely and offer treatment, if and when he developed eye problems. The pamphlet,with the bombastic title: "I Was Blind, but Can Now See. Restored to Sight by the Wonderful Absorption Treatment of.Dr. W. O. Coffee," featured the testament of one Miss Mae Jenkins and a letter to the public by the doctor himself.
Bilibin, Ivan
Four books, first editions, 1901 - 1903; 12 3/4 x 10; pp. [12] each; mustard wraps, chromolithographed; illustrated with full-page and in-line chromolithographs; a bit of wear and small nicks to spines; light wear and creasing to corners; one of the books with a closed cut to tail of spine; overall in very good condition.A beautiful collection of revered Russian graphic artist, illustrator, stage designer, and member of Mir Iskusstva Ivan Bilibin's (1876 - 1942) stunning masterpieces, the books were part of a series of fairy tales, which the Imperial Government had commissioned Bilibin to illustrate. - Peryshko Finista Iasna-Sokola (The Feather of Finist the Falcon)- Skazka ob Ivan-tsareviche, Zhar-ptitse i o Serom Volke (The Tale of Tsarevich Ivan, the Fire-Bird and the Grey Wolf)- Tsarevna Liagushka (The Frog Princess)- Sestritsa Alenushka i Bratets Ivanushka / Belaia Utochka (Sister Alenushka and Brother Ivanushka / The Little White Duck)
Anonymous
First edition, n. d. (1920s); 9 x 7; pp. [10]; card stock wraps, with a chromolothograph to the front wrap, incorporating two illustrations from the story, a frame within a frame; illustrated with black-and-white lithographed drawings and four full-page chromolithographed plates with pull-tab, movable parts; small rust spots around staples; a bit of wear to edges and corners; in very good condition.According to a lengthy research by Walter Iwaskiw and Barbara Dash of the Library of Congress on this beautiful and rare edition of the classic fairy tale (as per OCLC - the only copy at an institution) - ".sometimes the circumstances surrounding the publication of a single book can lead one into an unfamiliar realm of publishing and cultural history." The first question asked was why would Orenshtein, an Ukrainian-Jewish publisher, release a book in Russian, in the town of Kolomyia, or even in Kyiv, which were under Austrian rule from 1772 until 1918. Even more puzzling, for the fact that his publishing firm, founded in 1903, was known for its high-quality, affordable Ukrainian-language books. The answer to this might have been that after Galicia was occupied by Russia, then recovered by Austria, and then reoccupied by Russia between 1914 and 1918, all Ukrainian cultural institutions were shut down and efforts were made to introduce Russian into the educational system. Or, the book was intended as a special item to be marketed among Russophiles in the area. At some point during that time, Orenshtein was arrested and exiled to Russia, ceasing publishing altogether. After the end of WWI, he reemerged in Kyiv, where he opened a bookstore. He also founded a publishing house with branches in Leipzig and Berlin and between 1919 and 1932 he would publish many literary works, dictionaries, and approximately 40 children's books. Ultimately, Orenshtein would perish in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw during WWII. The second question was who was the artist and who supplied the movable paper technology for a very-modestly-produced publication. It turned out that Sully and Kleinteich in New York had published, around the same time, an English-language edition of "Red Riding Hood" with the same four movable chromolithographs (possibly) by Ethel Dewees. Did Orenshtein obtain the plates during a trip to the US he took in 1921? Or, as was the tradition of that period to have the major publishers of American and British children's illustrated books get their color printing done in Germany, perhaps Orenshtein had acquired the plates from the same European source? (W.R. Iwaskiw and B.L. Dash, "The mystery of Yakiv Orenshtain's Little Red Riding Hood" in Slavic & East European Information Resources, vol. 11, nos. 2-3 (Apr.-Sept. 2010), p. 120-135).
Spillman, Sandy
First edition presumed, n. d. (late 1940s - 1950); a complete set (but for one small envelope) of a magic wand, seven pictorial envelopes (the missing one mentioned above replaced with a plain, white one) containing "apparatus" for the tricks (special playing cards, card stock disks, etc.), instructions booklet, and the original large pictorial envelope holding it all together; small envelopes roughly and unevenly opened and the wooden magic wand with a closed crack, else light wear to the rest of the set; overall in very good condition.An unrecorded set, alternately titled: "Sandy Spillman's Magic Kit (Number 2)," it was created by the colorful and talented illusionist and on-air TV personality Sandy Spillman. He began his career in the 1940s with San Francisco's KPIX-TV, the first television station in Northern California, where he hosted game shows, presided over chat shows, and read the news. At the time, he considered doing magic tricks a hobby. He moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1960 and having met and charmed the co-founders of the now-iconic Hollywood Magic Castle, he was offered a job as a night manager at the institution. He would later transition to being the Medium at the Houdini Seance Room. There were 7 magic tricks in the current kit, including Magical Disk Escape, Reverso, Age Cards, etc.
Anonymous (Curtiss, C. E.)
First edition presumed, n. d. (1890s); 5 3/4 x 4 1/4; pp. [1], 4-57, [4]; brown wraps, printed in dark-blue and decorated with an elaborate border; foxing mostly to front wrap; paper a bit brittle, with a small chip to upper corner of back wrap; in good to very good condition.Uncommon, with at least two print variants known, the booklet was extremely-cheaply made and issued by an elusive enterpreneur, who would call himself in contemporary media advertisements "Mr. Mail Order Man!" (this copy with no indication of author/publisher; the variant copy with author/publisher identified in ads to front wrap verso). Unlike the giants of the 19th-century mail-order business Sears, Montgomery Ward, etc., Mr. Curtiss capitalized on the idea of inspiring people to start small, home-based, mail-order businesses with handmade goods. To that effect, he supplied the recipes and instructions for manufacturing hundreds of products, including makeup and beauty potions (Oriental Skin Beautifier, Perfume Tablets, Violet Tooth Powder), beverages (Lemon Beer, Sham Champagne), veterinary remedies, quack medicines, household cleaners, inks and dyes, and candy, as well as more bizarre ones, such as Fire Works, To Catch Foxes, and Artificial Honey. He appeared to had published several other books on magic tricks, on how to cure bashfullness, etc.