ART REFERENCE   
       [General Reading/ReferenceAND Real Rarities]

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Limited Edition Facsimile

•  Number 86 of a limited edition of 300 copies of this facsimile of the Victoria and Albert Museum copy of this famous writing book.

•  Publisher's light boards with printed dust wrapper, in Mylar protective jacket. Nearly new.  (23241)

Literati of Antwerp Salute One of Their Own — Portrait after Peter Paul Rubens
Woodcut *&* Engraved Versions of the Plantin Device

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•  First edition. A multi-part memorial volume from the Plantin–Moretus press in honor of Philippe Rubens (1574–1611), brother of the famed artist, whose Greek and Latin rendition of the Homilies by Asterius, Bishop of Amasia (ca. 375–405), occupies the first section of the text, here in Greek and Latin printed in double columns. Little is known about Asterius, Bishop of Amasea, and there has been much scholarly debate regarding exactly which homilies should be attributed to his authorship and which to other early Christians, including Asterius the Sophist; the Catholic Encyclopedia online says his works provide “valuable material to the Christian archaeologist.”

The second section here includes verses Rubens composed in the later years prior to his death in 1611 and dedicated to illustrious members of his circle including the humanist Justus Lipsius, Janus Woverius, and Peter Paul Rubens and Isabelle Brant, who married in 1609. Brant’s father, Jan, composed the introductory letter to the reader.

The volume was published at the request of Cardinal Ascanius Columnas in an edition ofonly 750 copies, and was printed at Antwerp at the press of Moretus’ widow and sons with the famous Plantin device appearing in two versions (engraved, to the title, and woodcut, to the final recto).

A full-page engraved funeral portrait of Rubens engraved by Cornelius Galleafter Peter Paul Rubens signals the beginning of the third section, in which Jan Brant records the life of his son-in-law’s brother and transcribes his epitaph. Even Balthasar Moretus contributes an epigram in honor of the deceased.

In the fourth section, Rubens’ own orations and selected letters appear, i.a. his funeral oration to Philip II of Spain. Josse DeRycke contributed the final funerary tribute.

Done up in fully elegant Plantin–Moretus style, the volume has in addition to its careful typography and full-page plate and devices been lavished throughout with two-line block initials and four-line historiated woodcut initials; also, it offers several intricate woodcut tailpieces.

Searches of NUC Pre-1956 and WorldCat locate only eight copies in U.S. institutions, one of which has been deaccessioned; most arenot in obvious places.

•  Graesse, I, 241; Corpus Rubenianum, XXI (1977), 152.   Period-style full brown calf, covers framed in blind double fillets, spine with gilt-stamped red leather title-label, raised bands with blind tooling extending onto covers. With a few odd spots to the text only, this is aremarkably fine, crisp copy. All edges green.  (28878)

Limited to303 Copies

•  Privately printed. Descriptions of 34 works, one per page, each with an illustration on opposite page. Catalogue printed by William Rudge.

•  Ex-library with blind pressure- and rubber-stamps, properly deaccessioned.  (1681)

Milkmaids, Bathing Beauties, Muses, Etc.

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•  Early edition: Remarkable collection of female nude photographs dating from the turn of the (20th) century, with an afterword by Bamlach. This is no. 246 in the series Die bibliophilen Taschenbücher, “pocket books for bibliophiles.”

•  Publisher's yellow bookcloth wrappers, front wrapper with affixed photographic label. Very clean and crisp.  (30630)

Just a Bit HEAVY for Taking with You to“the New Barnes” . . .

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•  Third edition, revised and enlarged: the central text of Dr. Barnes's art education curriculum, featuring 122 illustrations.

•  Publisher's cloth in original dust jacket; jacket with spine sunned, spine and extremities chipped. Ex–social club library: Front pastedown with bookplate and evidence that jacket was once taped down, dedication page with inked numeral in lower margin, spine with inked shelving number. Title-page with inked private ownership inscription dated 1942. Laid in, an amusing newspaper snippet. Outer edges (closed) with small area of staining; otherwise, internally clean and nice.  (33133)

With an Early Engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe
*&* Commentary on It

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•  Medical doctor, professor of mathematics, author, and founder of the first medical journal published in the New World (Mercurio volante), Bartolache was one of New Spain's memorable and colorful “characters” during the Age of Enlightenment. He was an eccentric and volatile personality in the academic, medical, cultural, and social life of Mexico City during the last third of the 18th century.

In this treatise Bartolache (1739–90) presents quite possibly the first historiographical study of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the literature about her. In all, Bartolache details and discusses 19 books and pamphlets.  Additionally, this volume contains an excellent engraving of the Virgin, designed by Jose Guerrero and engraved by Tomas Suria. The last text pages discuss this image of the Virgin as a physical object, as a piece of art: the structure supporting her, the proportions of the face and body, the “paint,” and so on. The final six leaves contain a list of subscribers, which is rather unusual in Mexican books, and there are two other, unsigned, related engravings.

•  Medina, Mexico, 7957; Grajales & Burrus, Bibliografia guadalupana, 273; Palau 25095; Maggs, Bibl. Amer., I, 1141, and VI, 5899; Beristain, I, 141; Puttick & Simpson, Bibliotheca Mejicana, 167; Sutro, p. 33.   Contemporary acid-stained sheep (Valenciana style) with gilt spine, marbled endpapers and all edges red; fore-edge of rear cover gnawed upon by a rodent, but not too seriously. A clean, attractive copy of a book both widely and deeply interesting.  (36633)

Detailed — DETAILED!

•  First American edition, translated by Christina Hedström and Gerald Taylor, of one of the most comprehensive reference books on the subject. The volume is illustrated with eight color plates and 239 monochromes (the latter mostly in-text, some full-page).

•  Publisher's blue cloth, spine with gilt- and blue-stamped title; without dust jacket, spine slightly sunned, a clean, solid copy.  (24835)

The Best in Design — Limited Riverside Press Edition byBruce Rogers

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•  Printed by the Riverside Press and designed byBruce Rogers, this volume celebrates influential 16th-century engraver Geofroy Tory. Typographer and type designer Rogers (1870–1957) worked for the Riverside Press from 1895 to 1911; upon realizing there was no appropriate type for Tory's biography, Rogers was determined to — according to the prospectus — create a font that would “suggest the types used by Tory . . . , harmonize with the decorations, [and] be agreeable to the eye.” Thus, he created “Riverside Caslon” specifically for this edition.

Tory (ca. 1480 – ca. 1533) was an editor, author, and engraver whose work greatly influenced French book design; among his contributions was the promotion of the use of accents, apostrophes, and other punctuation marks in printed French. Tory's designs have been reproduced as initials, headings, and borders for this volume; the title-page, printed in black and red, bears just one of those stunning borders.

This is the second, revised edition of Auguste Bernard's 1865 work on Tory appearing in English for the first time, having been translated from the original French by George B. Ives.

The prospectus is laid in, announcing the edition as being of 350 copies; as per the colophon, this is no. 71 of 370.

Binding: Publisher's green cloth with gilt lettering to spine, rectangle of ornate gilt decoration to boards featuring a simple Grecian urn at the base surrounded by leafy vines in two sets of large swirls, all within a double-ruled border and a border of fleurs-de-lis.

•  Warde, Bruce Rogers, 94; Work of Bruce Rogers, 184.   Bound as above, very minor rubbing to boards and corners; in original white slipcase, black paper spine with tan spine-label and scuffed, short stray pen mark to one side. Interior clean, bottom and fore-edges uncut, prospectus lightly age-toned. An elegant limited edition, expertly designed by one of the greats.  (38200)

WithSigned Lithograph & Leather Portfolio

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•  Special limited edition of this exhibition catalogue: 10 crosshatched graphite drawings by Brach (1924–2007), founding dean of the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts. The volume opens with introductions by Terry Melton and the artist; it was designed, composed, printed, and bound by Meriden-Stinehour Press in Vermont.

An original lithograph is laid into the back pastedown pocket: “Sky Horses,” numbered copy 5 out of 50, signed by Brach. The volume is housed in a leather portfolio blind-tooled with the artist's signature.

Provenance:  This copy is inscribed on the front free endpaper by the artist: “For Judith & Gus, Happy Trails,” bearing the date 10 March 1990.

•  Publisher's sand-colored variegated linen, front cover with artist's name stamped in black; boards very slightly cocked, leather portfolio showing minimal edge wear. A beautiful copy. The leather portfolio is often missing, but not here.  (33427)

“Large Scale” in Several Respects . . .
62 Engravings & Bedford Bound
A Classic of English Antiquarianism, Illustration, & Book-Making 

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•  First edition, illustrated with a total of 62 engraved plates. Allibone describes Brayley “a laborious and accurate topographer”; he compiled and edited a wide range of works with titles featuring assorted Beauties, Picturesques, Histories, Antiquities, etc. The present work provides a history of Westminster Abbey and some of its associated luminaries, along with extensive descriptions of its architecture, sculptures, and paintings. The illustrator who portrayed many of the above, John Preston Neale, was an architectural draftsman and landscape painter “best remembered for his views of the nation's country houses, churches, and public buildings,” according to the Oxford DNB.

Binding:  By Francis Bedford, signed, in dark brown morocco done between 1851 and 1880, covers framed and panelled in ornate gilt rolls with gilt-stamped corner fleurons and midpoint decoration. Spines gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels. Board edges gilt-tooled with triple fillets, turn-ins with gilt-tooled rolls and corner fleurons. All edges gilt. Stamped “F. Bedford” on lower front turn-in.

Provenance:  Each front pastedown with armorial bookplate of William Arthur, sixth Duke of Portland.

•  NSTC 2B46491; Allibone 240; Brunet, II, 1215.   Binding as above, minor shelf wear to lower edges and corners, vol. I with front board expertly reattached and with small dent to outer edge of front cover. Joints delicate, due to size and weight of volumes, but holding. A few pages and plates with faint foxing, otherwise clean.  (24100)

For ARCHITECTURE,  click here.
For SETS,  click here.

(Cassatt, Mary).  Hale, Nancy. Mary Cassatt. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1975.
$15.00

With BOTH the Author's & the Subject'sSignatures

John Bacon

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•  Uncommon first edition of this life of the prominent sculptor, remembered for his memorial busts and statues in Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, and elsewhere. The author was an eminent Church of England clergyman and one of the founders of the Eclectic Society. Joseph Collyer steel-engraved the frontispiece portrait, which shows Bacon at work on a classical head, after John Russell.

WorldCat locates only seven U.S. institutional holdings.

Provenance:  This copy is inscribed by the author on a front fly-leaf: “Mrs. Bacon wth the author's affect. respects.” In addition, athree-page autograph letter signed by Bacon is tipped in; the letter pertains to Bacon family heraldic and heritage matters and includes mention of a deposition. The front pastedown bears the pictorial bookplate and small ticket of Robert Heysham Sayre of Bethlehem, PA.

•  NSTC C1166.   19th-century half brown morocco with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and blind-tooled trefoil decorations in compartments; joints refurbished, spine bands and extremities slightly worn. Pages age-toned; six leaves browned from an old stain and a few more with small marginal areas browned; frontispiece and title-page with spots of foxing. Manuscript letter with outer edges creased, some creases partially slit, one small strip detached along an edge fold and laid in. An attractive copy of an interesting text with excellent and interesting additional material.  (33598)

(Ceramics).  Litchfield, Frederick. Pottery and porcelain: A guide to collectors. New York: M. Barrows and Company, [1950]. Folio. Illus.
$40.00

•  Sixth edition. Illustrated with color & black-and-white photos and drawings.

•  Publisher's cloth. Very good condition, no dust jacket.

Clark, Kenneth. The other half: A self-portrait. London: John Murray, 1977. Dust jacket in good condition, very slightly crumpled at top of spine.
$17.50   (6472)

(Clark, Kenneth). Secrest, Meryle. Kenneth Clark: A biography. New York: Fromm International, 1986. Paperback, in fine condition, inscribed by author. With photographs.
$7.50   (6473)

Capturing an AgeOne Biography at a Time

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•  First edition: Concise yet entertainingly anecdote-laden biographies recounting the accomplishments and characters (foibles and all) of the most prominent figures of the age: nobles, churchmen, politicians, dissenters, military and naval officers, jurists, physicians, voyagers and travelers, scientists, writers, economists, architects,artists and musicians, etc. All the expectable princesses, duchesses, and countesses are present, along with a handful of women represented in other categories — the preponderance falling under the “Vocal Performers” and “Actors” headings.

The first volume is illustrated with12 plates each offering four rows of small portraits, some intriguingly expressive; each volume opens with an engraved frontispiece portrait of a royal George.

•  NSTC 2C23867.   Recent textured maroon cloth, spines with gilt-stamped black leather title and volume labels; title-pages institutionally pressure- (not rubber-) stamped. Scattered light spots of staining, pages generally clean; first few leaves of voI. \ II with outer margins chipped. A hefty, substantive evocation of Georgian life and times.  (30012)

REACTIONARY!

•  With 34 black and white plates. A scathing critique of modernist impulses in contemporary art, namely its emphasis on composition for its own sake, a style that dispenses with or distorts natural forms. The author advocates instead a return to art that is derived from the experiences of the people and has meaning for them.

•  Publisher's cloth, stamped in gilt and red on the spine and on the front. Light wear to edges, corners, and over joints; spine darkened. A very good copy.

“STUMPED & the KITTENS Are Everywhere” — One of 26 Special Copies

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•  A collection of poems on various subjects, with an especial emphasis onart history. The title-page is lettered in sky blue and black, with a small blue sand dollar ornament. 376 copies comprise this limited edition printed by Wesley Tanner at theSand Dollar Press, including26 on Wookey Hole paper and signed by the poet, of which this is number 14.

Michael Davidson (b. 1944) was the first curator of the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego, where he has taught American Literature since 1988.

•  Stitched in orange paper wrappers with matching orange paper jacket, title and author printed in light brown surrounded by black ornamental frame on front cover. Fine, in a mylar slipcase.  (30796)

Hague & Gill Bibliography — “Observing Eric Gill's Centenary”

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•  First edition: Compiled and with an introduction by James Davis. The text is illustrated with four versions of the printer's devices designed by Gill for Hague & Gill, plus “Pigotts Road.”

•  Publisher's plain paper wrappers. Clean and fresh.  (29721)

The Art of the Printed Book

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•  First edition: Essays on book design and printing by a famed typographer, book designer, and hand-printer. This is one of 325 copies (300 for sale) printed; the edition was designed by Carol J. Blinn at Warwick Press, printed by Daniel Keleher at Wild Carrot Letterpress, bound by Sarah Creighton and C.J. Blinn in quarter olive Niger goatskin and paste paper–covered sides (paper made by Blinn), andsigned at the colophon by the author.

•  Binding as above, inoriginal terra-cotta paper–covered slipcase; leather very gently sunned, slipcase with lower edge rubbed and each side with a small unobtrusive spot/mark or two to paper, otherwise clean. Informative and attractive. (30560)

An Artist's View of theEarly Development of American Art

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•  First edition. Dunlap (1766–1839) was “one of the first outstanding figures of the American stage” according to the Oxford Companion to the Theatre; sent to London to study painting with Benjamin West, he found the lure of the theatre more compelling and eventually became a playwright, manager of New York’s Park Theatre, and vice president of the National Academy of Design. Here reverting to his first “life,” he provides interesting biographical accounts, full of anecdotes and personal observations, of numerous prominent American artists and their works. Vol. I features a facsimile of an autograph bill of sale, for portraits, by John Singleton Copley.

•  On Dunlap, see: Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 211. American Imprints 24237; BAL 5026; Howes D571; Sabin 21303.   Publisher's quarter green diced cloth and tan paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped title; edges and extremities rubbed, corners bumped, spines sunned, sides with spots of staining and discoloration. Front hinges (inside) tender. Ex–social club library: spines with paper shelving labels, front pastedowns with 19th-century bookplates and inked shelving numbers, title-pages and one other in each volume rubber-stamped, no other markings. Some outer corners of vol. II lightly waterstained; a very few instances of small spots of staining.  (27558)

For POST-1820 AMERICANA,  click here.

“To Toiling Millions, Whose Means are Small, Yet Whose
Desires are Great to Possess a Home . . .”

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•  For the handy 19th-century American in need of a home but without the means to consult a professional (“and yet whose tastes are as worthy of being gratified”), anarchitectural handbook for building one's own cottage on a humble budget. Charles P. Dwyer (ca. 1815 – ca. 1880), an architect and writer, emigrated to North America from Ireland and had moved to Buffalo, NY, by 1847. He subsequently began to publish architectural advice books for people with limited advantages among other works.

Log cabins, plank buildings, and double cottages are a few of the thoughtfully “economic” buildings Dwyer advises for “men of small means.” The materials he suggests are “adapted to every locality” and affordable for dwellers of each neighborhood. The manual is illustrated with32 black-and-white plates (including an added lithographed title-page), 23 of which represent Dwyer's cottages, the other eight being plans for their designs. The lithographs are by Compton, of Buffalo.

Binding: Publisher's brown cloth with gilt lettering and foliate decoration to spine; deep blind-stamped triple-ruled and foliate border on front board framing stylized gilt title and cottage centerpiece; rear board identical to front board but with centerpiece in blind. Saffron endpapers.

Provenance:  On front free endpaper, 20th-century signature of “Wm. B. Goodwin, M.I.T.” A rubber-stamp from the Lowell Historical Society appears on the front pastedown and on the top and bottom edge.

•  Hitchcock, American architectural books . . . portfolios, and pamphlets . . . published in America before 1895, 389.   Bound as above; rubbing to extremities, small tears at spine head, minor coppery discoloration to gilt on front board. Provenance stamp and signature as above; age-toned edges and minor to moderate foxing throughout interior. Sound and unassuming, much like its target audience.  (38084)

ALL the ACTUAL PRINTER'S BLOCKS for the *47* Illustrations
        of Zoeth Skinner Eldredge'sThe Beginnings of San Francisco

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•  A FULL SET of the printer's blocks prepared of the illustrations for Zoeth Skinner Eldredge's The Beginnings of San Francisco (1912), being 37 photographic half-tones on copper and 10 zinc cuts, all on wood blocks, ranging generally in size from approximately 2.5" square to 14" square, with oblong maps measuring up to 20" across. A number of the half-tones were done after drawings by Walter Francis, a California artist and illustrator who worked for the San Francisco Chronicle; a few blocks offer images of photographs, some identified as taken by W.C. Mendenhall of the U.S. Geological Survey or Captain D.D. Gaillard of the Boundary Commission; other images are said to be from paintings and a daguerrotype held privately, with another being the facsimile of a document in the John Carter Brown Library; and, indeed, some are simply “after” images in other books (e.g., The Annals of San Francisco and “Bartlett's Narrative”). The images include a dozen California maps and plans; photographic views of the Colorado Desert and an artistic sketch of “the Trail on the Gila”; portraits of prominent early Californians; several “military moments” and a plan of the Presidio in 1820; plus, notably, scenic and historic “views” including renderings of “the Palo Alto,” the ports of Monterey and San Diego, Yerba Buena, and a number of street and bay scenes depicting San Francisco proper.

Eldredge was a New York–born banker and amateur historian of California whose Beginnings of San Francisco, though possibly self-published, is listed in Cowan & Cowan and described there as “of great historical value.”

In addition to the 47 images/blocks from that work present here, we offer four others that seem to be “related” but which we have not identified beyond establishing that they do not seem to be from the same author's History of California (1915). We must wonder, were they images prepared for the Beginnings and not used? The additional zinc-cut image of a document signed by Gaspar de Portola and two of the three additional half-tones on copper (Portola sighting San Francisco bay and the Spaniards marching to Monterey) were found as online images without clear attribution as to their physical sources; and the last, a western scene not identified, has not yet been “matched” at all.

Most blocks from the Beginnings are still in or withwrappers showing the images printed from them, as would have been convenient for the printers — these marked (as the backs of the blocks themselves sometimes are) identifying the images and/or showing that the work was completed. (The additional blocks are unwrapped and unmarked.)

In sum, thiscomplete array of the blocks used for printing a substantial and well-regarded Titanic-era book looks like something that was put on a printing house shelf one afternoon in 1912 at the end of an ordinary project for the pressmen and simply stayed there. Seeing it on its present PRB&M shelf, coherent and unmessed-with more than 100 years later, is like walking up to that shelf through one of time's “wrinkles.”

•  On the Beginnings, see: Cowan & Cowan, Bibliography of the History of California, 193. For a list of all its images and notes on their origins, see: http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hbbegidx.htm.   The paper wrappers present are variously just fine or age-toned or browned, chipped, torn along folds. ALL the blocks are in good condition; this is not a sort of thing easily damaged!  (29741)

GiltMOSAIC Binding

[Gavard, Charles]. 

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•  One of several works with the identical title but from different publishers and with different contents! The present volume contains engravings after paintings in the palace's “Galeries Historiques”: the engravers include Leroux, Masson, Thomas, Nargoot, Rebel, Frilley, and many others. Curiously, many engravings bear a faint line of identification reading “Diagraphe et Pantographe Gavard” and they have non-sequential numbering, meaning the images from this source could be and were recombined to form a wide variety of souvenir albums.

In this copy all plates are guarded by sheets of heavy paper stock.

Binding:  In the style of a percaline mosaïquée, but the gilt and mosaic are applied to a textured pebbled cloth. Spine gilt extra with added “mosaic” of green, white, red and blue. Front cover with a blind-stamped border incorporating elegant corner-pieces; within this, “Souvenir de Versailles” gilt-stamped in an arc above a large on-laid crowned coat of arms flanked by banners and flags, this embellished in gilt with rich use of blue, white, red, blue, and green. Rear cover with similar blind-stamped border and a different large gilt-stamped center device strikingly incorporating an on-lay of blue stamped in gilt with a military medal. All edges gilt.

•  On this type of binding, see: Morris & Levin, The Art of Publishers' Bookbindings, pp. 94–97.   Binding as above, rubbed to the underlying boards at the corners of the boards and top of spine slightly pulled with one bit of rubbing. Scattered pale brown stains mostly on interleaves and sometimes visible on versos of plates; some discoloration in some margins of plates and occasionally into one; overwhelmingly a clean copy, remarkably bright and unfoxed. A strong and nice example of this category of “souvenir” and of a gilt mosaic binding.  (30464)

For BOOKS IN FRENCH,  click here.

“As the Puritan & Industrial Bases of Our Civilization Crumble beneath Us . . .
A Change ofCLOTHES Becomes Inevitable” — Signed by Gill

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•  First edition: The famed (and now controversial) artist discourses on the complicated interactions between biology, economics, culture, religion, and human sexuality and their effects on men's and women's wardrobes — the whole serving as an exposition of the author's philosophy of art, and incidentally of gender. This is the trade edition of the first printing, illustrated with10 wood engravings done by Gill.

Signed by Gill at the colophon, with a note on the front free endpaper recording that this copy was done 19 February 1934 “at a lecture at the Edinburgh College of Art.”

•  Gill (second ed.) 22.   Publisher's textured olive cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; dust jacket lacking, spine sunned, lower extremities showing faint shelfwear. Front free endpaper with early inked ownership inscription and later annotation as above. Sewing starting to loosen slightly; pages age-toned with scattered faint smudges.  (35328)

Frescoes forWestminster Palace

•  Prince Albert headed this committee set up by the Queen to decorate the new Houses of Parliament: The report examines the feasibility of ordering murals in fresco compatible with the architecture and style of the building. This is the first of at least five such reports issued between 1842 and 1846.

Rare: We trace no U.S. copies of this work via NUC Pre-1956, OCLC, or RLIN, nor is it in NSTC

•  Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly age-toned with a little light staining.  (11192)

How Much Were theTownley Marbles Worth?

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•  Government document 172, “Ordered to be printed 19th June 1805.” This scarce discussion of the British Museum’s proposed acquisition of a significant collection of classical sculpture includes several contemporary assessments of the value of Townley’s marbles — which did indeed go to the museum later in the year of this item’s publication. John Flaxman was one of those expressing an opinion of the trove; he says that he has “paid a great deal of attention to it as a Sculptor” and believes it to be “richly worth” the sum of £20,000.

RLIN and OCLC report only one holding of this item in the U.S.

•  Not in NSTC. Removed from a nonce volume, now in a Mylar folder; title-page and final blank lightly dust-soiled. Sewing mostly gone. Title-page with short tear from inner margin, not touching text; some leaves with small edge chips.  (17274)

ForENGLISH POLITICS,  click here.

La Mort Ny Mord

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•  First edition: Italian version of the stunning Firmin Didot–printed rendering of the Dance of Death, inspired by Holbein’s work. The textual selections from early Christian saints, given in Latin, are accompanied by quatrains in Italian and prefaced by an Italian introduction written by Luigi Odorici — unlike the English and French editions published by Tross in the same year, which were both introduced by Anatole de Montaiglon, who had made the editorial selections.

Each meditation on death opens with a reproduction of one of Holbein’s initials, done by Heinrich Loedel, withthe whole alphabet being represented except, of course, J and U; and each page is framed in an exquisite death-themed, wood-engravedborder done by Léon le Maire after designs from a Book of Hours printed by Simon Vostre. Theoriginal front wrapper is preserved here, and the pages are untrimmed, resulting in some leaves having very wide margins.

Provenance:  From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Brunet, III, 259 (for French ed. only).   19th-century quarter printed cloth with marbled paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped decorative bands and gilt-stamped black leather title-label; minor rubbing to extremities. Mild age-toning and foxing throughout, more noticeable on bound-in wrapper; wrapper with inner portion repaired some time ago. Attractive and interesting.  (37927)

A QUITELuxurious & Useful Production

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•  Canvassing ancient Egypt to the Italian Renaissance and modern times, this monograph on ceramic art distinguishes classes and styles of pottery, is illustrated with200 wood-engraved figures by Hercule Catenacci and Jules Jacquemart, bears12 full-page engraved plates by the latter, and tells how to identify many works' makers, cataloguing1,000 marks and monograms. Each full-page plate is protected by a guard sheet with a brief letterpress description.

Jules Jacquemart (1837–80) was but in his mid-twenties when he began drawing from the renowned art collection of his father, Albert, an art historian. The Jacquemarts' first book on the subject was the Histoire de la porcelaine, followed shortly by this, its companion, in 1873, when Jules was “at work again on his own best work of etching.” He also made the etchings for Techener's Histoire de la bibliophilie (1860–64) and, in 1864, received an important commission from the French crown for Gemmes et joyaux de la couronne (1865).

The monograph's originalcolor-painted beaux-arts wrappers are bound in at the front and back here, including the spine in front (rubbed and faded, hinting at original splendor). The title-page is printed in red and black. An extensive index appears at the end.

Binding: Three-quarter evergreen morocco bordered with gilt fillets over bubble gum and mint marbled paper boards; spine with raised bands, gilt-framed compartments containing author, title, date, and appropriate devices in gilt; endpapers matching marbled boards and top edge gilt.

•  For J. Jacquemart, see: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. IX, pp. 681–90.   Leather lightly scuffed at extremities and sunned to a woody green on spine and upper front cover; offsetting from turn-ins onto endpapers. Mild to (occasionally) moderate foxing throughout and old water damage on a few leaves only.  (30132)

One Year's Worth ofWell-Spent Half Hours

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•  First edition: Engaging periodical compilation of poetry, history, Christian meditations, natural history, art and literary criticism, biography, and fiction, set forth in 52 weekly issues meant to be consumed in half-hour portions, with each weekly number containing seven half-hours. (Indices and quarterly title-pages are bound in here.)

Knight, who was devoted to books and to literature from the time he was a small child, was a much-admired printer and publisher, as well as an author, reformer, and would-be educator: Many of his publishing endeavors were aimed at improving and enlightening the working class.

•  NSTC 2K7731. On Knight, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. On binding cloth, see: Krupp, Bookcloth, style Wav3.   Publisher's textured brown cloth, covers blind-stamped with muse motif and title, spines with gilt-stamped title and blind-stamped decorations; lightly worn overall with some fading, vol. II spine head with traces of a strip of cloth tape. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Paper slightly embrittled (more so in second volume), with a few short edge tears. Externally ordinary; internally worthwhile.  (26860)

Kraus, H.P., bookseller, New York. Arts: Art, Architecture, Archaeology, Festivities, Music, Drama, Film. New York: H.P. Kraus, (19--). 4to.
$7.50

•  Catalogue 166.

•  Original wrappers.  (6486)

•  Special Bulletin 10.

•  Stapled in original wrappers.  (6488)

Click here for a database including
  not in PRB&M's illustrated catalogues . . .
     AUTHOR  keyword, e.g. = KRAUS, H. P.
  NOTE SPACE between H. & P.

A Mathematician, a Missionary, & theChinese Rites Controversy

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•  In the annals of early Westerners writing about China, the members of the Society of Jesus rank high for the quantity and quality of their writings. Louis Le Comte (1655–1728) began his novitiate in October 1671, was sent to China as a mathematician and a member of the 1687 Jesuit mission under the leadership of Jean de Fontaney, and returned to Europe in 1691. In 1696 he published his Nouveaux mémoires sur l'état présent de la Chine: It caused great debate within the Chinese Rites Controversy.

This is the first edition of the English translation of that work. It begins with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Emperor Cam-hy [i.e., K'ang-hsi] signed “M. Vander Gucht sculp.” The other plates depict “The throne of the emperor of China” (folding), “Outom-Chu, a tree in China,” “The observatory at Pekin” (folding), and a folding table of “All the words that form the Chinese tongue” (!!).

The work is a classic in the field of early European accounts of China, of missions to and in China, and of travel in general. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of this edition and may have done so for the work's sections on education in that kingdom.

Provenance:  Signature of M. Middleton dated 1699 at top of the frontispiece. Later in the collection of the Pacific School of Religion (properly released).

•  Wing (rev. ed.) L831; ESTC R15898; Goldsmiths'-Kress 3379; DeBacker-Sommervogel, II, 1356; Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica, I, 40.   Contemporary modest Cambridge-style binding of speckled calf; very nicely newly rebacked. Small institutional stamp on title-page and in margin of one other page. A very good copy.  (36372)

Ancient Dress.  51 Copper-Engraved Plates.

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•  First edition: Treatise on ancient dress among the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Jews, and Romans, among other peoples. The author, a Flemish artist also known as Andries Cornelis Lens, came to the study of antiquarian clothing by way of his classically inspired focus in painting. Illustrated with 51 copper-engraved plates done by Pitre Martenasie, this is an “Ouvrage estimé” according to Brunet (who seemingly mistakenly cites 57 engravings as opposed to the 51 given by von Lipperheide, described in institutional holdings, and present here).

•  Brunet, III, 980; Von Lipperheide, Katalog der Freiherrlich von Lipperheide’schen Kostumbibliothek, 105. Contemporary calf, rebacked in complementary style, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; original leather acid-pitted and cracked over edges and extremities. Front pastedown with small bookseller’s ticket from Albany, NY; free endpapers with a few stray pencilled notations. Dedication page with institutional rubber-stamp in lower margin.  (19415)

For CLOTHING & FASHION,  click here.

Lindsay, Jack. Turner: The man and his art. London, Toronto, Sydney, New York: Granada Publishing Limited, 1985. 8vo. 179 pp.; illus.
$30.00

•  First edition. With 12 color and 13 black and white illustrations.

•  Paperback. On both covers is a detail of the painting A First Rate Taking in Stores.

“The First Public Manifestation” of theLiverpool First Edition Club
Signed by Eric Gill

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•  Catalogue of the Liverpool First Edition Club's debut exhibition, with a foreword by Eric Gill including his thoughts on the nature of Art and book production.

Provenance:  Signed by Eric Gill (“Eric G”) at the end of his foreword; additionally, elegantly inscribed to rare book collector Clark Stillman by the artist's brother and biographer Evan R. Gill, dated 28 September 1937.

Searches of NUC and WorldCat located only three copies in U.S. libraries.

•  Publisher's printed paper wrappers; wrappers detached, sunned, and chipped. Pages clean.  (36969)

Kay's Improved & Enlarged Edition of
theUniversal Receipt Book
  [A Best-Selling How-To Guide]

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•  Early U.S. edition: All-encompassing compendium of 19th-century practical knowledge — anything you can't do using instructions from this manual, you probably shouldn't be trying in the first place, though one assumes that in many cases there are more effective modern means now established! The work starts out with metallurgy (including everything you need to know in order to assay the value of silver, cast bronze finely, or color steel blue), proceeds toart (make your own crayons, or paint a miniature on ivory), and ranges to subjects such as farriery, tanning, horticulture, and husbandry, before closing with an assortment of miscellanea not covered by any previous header. Culinary topics include brewing, wine-making, preserving, and confectionary, as well as good basic recipes for such classics as potted beef, quince pudding, mock turtle soup, and “tomata catsup”; the carving appendix is illustrated with in-text wood engravings. The medicine section is quite lengthy, and covers ailments both mild and severe.

Five Thousand Receipts was first printed in America in 1826, and enjoyed as enthusiastic a reception in the United States as it previously had in England. This is the fourth American edition, here in the Kay variant giving “122 Chestnut Street – near 4th” as the publisher's address.

Provenance: Francis Kelsey, New York City.

•  Bitting 299; Lowenstein 122; Shoemaker 39366.   Contemporary sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-stamped decorations; worn and abraded, joints open and fragile, front cover darkened, leather lost at spine extremities. Front free endpaper with early inked ownership inscription; front fly-leaf with small hole and pencilled annotations. Pages with varying degrees of age-toning and spotting, several signatures deeply browned. Some corners dog-eared. One leaf with upper outer corner torn away, with loss of a few words; one leaf with tear from lower margin extending into text without loss; one leaf with internal closed tear, without loss. Used, as this usually was!  (27405)

For more “How-To,”  click here.

Marilyn Monroe'sLAST Posed Photo Session

•  The 1964 issue of this popular annual includesan essay by Margaret Bourke-White, in addition to the 12-page portfolio showcasing Bert Stern's photographs of Marilyn Monroe (and much more).

•  Publisher's red cloth in dust wrapper, jacket not price-clipped; dust jacket rubbed and chipped at extremities and along upper back edge, light dustsoiling to portion of back cover.  (24682)

MODERN LIBRARY“LEONARDO”

•  Fiction.

•  Publisher's limp boards, stamped in gilt. Spine a little sunned. Last few pages unopened. Near fine copy.

Michener onJapanese Woodblocks

•  First edition of this “tour of three centuries of art,” conducted by famed novelist Michener. 257 illustrations decorate the substantial volume, including 55 in full color; many are full-page, others in-text or several to a page.

•  Publisher's textured taupe silk binding, front cover with patterned coral silk insert; spine with gilt-stamped title. Dust wrapper and original slipcase present, lower back corner of jacket slightly crumpled; otherwise a gorgeous, clean copy in an undamaged slipcase.  (24683)

A Famous Designer's TRAVELOGUE ofHis TRIP TO CHINA in 1984

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•  Issued chiefly as a sample of the Champion International Corporation's papers. The title appears on the front of the book's box, on the inside cover of the same (as “Champion Kromekote opens whole new worlds”), and below the colophon of the book.

Titled “China” on its front cover, the book is designer Miho's travelogue of a trip to China in 1984, with his conversational, informal text on the verso of its leaves and ahandsome, well-chosen color photograph opposite on each facing leaf's recto.

Colophon reads: “Design [by] Miho. Printing [by] Hennegan Co. Cincinatti [sic]. Paper: Cover, Kromekot 15 cover/.010 Text, Kromekote enamel / 90 lb. Box, Kromekote Lith / 60 lb. Colorcast boxwrap, red on red.”

The near-miniature travelogue book is contained in a larger box measuring 19 x 19 x 2 cm (7.375" x 7,375" x .75").

WorldCat locates fewer than ten reported copies worldwide.

•  Book in fine condition, box very good. A fascinating, evocative little production.  (36984)

Garrick, Cromwell, Addison, Locke, Raleigh, et al.

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•  Third edition, “revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged, by the Addition of New Lives”: great figures of U.K. history, from a variety of fields. The first volume's frontispiece was engraved by James Caldwall after William Hamilton.

Binding:  Contemporary cream-colored sheep, covers framed in gilt floral roll, spines with gilt compartment decorations and gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels; turn-ins with gilt roll of a vine design, blue endpapers, all edges gilt.

Provenance:  Front pastedowns each with rather attractive 19th-century institutional bookplate, rubber-stamped “withdrawn”; title-page rectos each with rubber-stamped numeral. The set isfrom the collection of noted historian and military critic John Watts de Peyster: the title-page versos (or, in two cases, the contents pages) bear his affixed printed curriculum vitae.

Evidence of Readership:  In vol. I, two (helpful!) inked notes or reminders of where to look for pages bound in out of order; vol. II's front pastedown with inked inscription from Petrarch, “Solo e pensoso i piú deserti campi,” and its back free endpaper with first four lines of Gaetana Passerini's “Genova mia.”

•  ESTC T107371.   Bound as above, spines rubbed and darkened with labels variably chipped and one compartment variably lightened from now-absent shelving label; sides scuffed, edges and extremities rubbed. Pastedowns and title-pages as above; some endpapers showing light waterstaining; back endpapers with old paper adhesions; age-toning throughout. Vol. I: one leaf with lower margin repaired, not affecting text; a number of leaves from pp. 100–20 bound in out of order (see above); final text page with lower margin neatly excised. Vol. II: Inscriptions as above, back pastedown with a pencil sketch. Vol. III: small area of worming to final portion of volume, obscuring a few letters on some pages. Vol. IV: title-page with old staining; small areas of worming to front endpapers and to inner and outer portions of some pages with loss of a few letters. Vol. VI: title-page with small area of offsetting from affixed slip on reverse. A respectably (even endearingly) aged, complete set of interesting provenance.  (33397)

Limited Edition of 80 Copies, with anOriginal Water Color

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•  Nancy's treatise on the philosophy of portraiture was issued in a trade edition and a limited edition. This is a copy of the limited edition of 80 copies containing an original water color portrait by François Martin: 70 were numbered and for sale, five were lettered and for the artist, and five were lettered and not for sale.

This is number 21 of the 70 numbered, with the water color being a version of the frontispiece on heavy artists' paper and signed by the artist with his initials.

•  Original wrappers with a glassine dust jacket; front wrapper and title-page with publisher's “scribble” device above imprint as seen on other titles from this press. Very good.  (35646)

Life WithoutPipe Dreams? — Designed by Leonard Baskin

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•  First published in 1940 and performed six years later on Broadway, O'Neill's drama about despair and disillusionment playing out at an American bar is considered one of the playwright's most ambitious and famous works.

For the present edition, limited to 2,000 copies of which this is number 1496, artist Leonard Baskin (1922–2000) designed the text using monotype Janson font and created nine full-page black and white drawings of O'Neill's characters, reproduced by Meriden Gravure Company, and one sanguine lithograph pulled on Arches paper by Fox-Graphics Editions. In her introductory essay, “O'Neill and Baskin: The Iconography of a Double Exposure,” art historian Irma Jaffe analyzes the illustrations and traces the parallels in the art and lives of the playwright (1888–1953) and Baskin, who has signed this below the colophon.

Binding:  The play was printed and bound at the Stinehour Press in Lunenburg, VT, in full Curtis gray paper–covered boards with printed paper labels on the spine and front cover. It is rather bleak-looking — which is perfectly appropriate given the nihilistic theme of the play.

This offering includes the monthly newsletter.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 525.   Binding as above. Fine, in a fine slipcase.  (30747)

FALLS fromVermont to Hawaii

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•  Elegant accordion-pleated presentation of this series of waterfall photographs, taken throughout the United States and offering intriguing urban images in addition to the more typical scenic views. Deborah Tall's accompanying essay on waterfalls and representations thereof is laid in.

•  Publisher's midnight blue cloth–covered boards, spine with blind-stamped title, in original cream and blue cloth–covered slipcase; binding and case in beautiful condition. An attractive volume.  (30642)

Two Seasonal Spectacles at the Theatre Royal
  SPECIAL EFFECTS 1829

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•  Unusual theatrical bifolium: two attached playbills from 1829. The first sheet advertises a Shakespeare production starring Mr. Aitken, Mr. Kean, Mrs. Faucit, and Miss Faucit, along with“a Splendid Comic Christmas Pantomime” called Jack in the Box; or, Harlequin and the Princess of the Hidden Island. The latter includes a descriptive list of the scenes as painted by Clarkson Stanfield (“The Giant's Dining Parlour,” “Lime-Kilns, near Gravesend,” “Cheesemonger's Shop and Wine Vaults,” etc.).

The second sheet is for Stanfield's “Grand Local Diorama,” the grand finale of which involved the “magnificent display of the Falls of the Virginia Waters, seen through the Fairy Temple of Luminaria” — facilitated by a hydraulic apparatus capable of discharging 39 tons of water, “forming a coup d'oeil never before witnessed on any stage.”

A contemporary of Stanfield's once called him “the prince of scene-painters,” and his dioramas were legendary for their beauty and immersive effects.

•  Split halfway up center fold and neatly repaired from rear; one untrimmed outer edge slightly ragged. Gently age-toned. Delightful (and very displayable) piece of theatrical ephemera.  (36575)

Pro Helvetia Foundation. Swiss drawings: Masterpieces of five centuries. Organized by the Pro Helvetia Foundation. Introduction and notes by Walter Hugelshofer. Circulated by the Smithsonian Institution. 1967–1968. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1967. 8vo. 176 pp.; illus.
$22.00

•  An exhibition catalogue of Swiss draftsmanship from the 16th to the 20th century, from Holbein to Giacometti. With 126 illustrations.

•  Paperback. Gift inscription on front endpaper. Fine.

On Paintings in Rome & Italian Painters — CORRECTED

Click any image where the hand appears on
mouse-over, for an enlargement.

•  Uncommon second, corrected edition of a work originally printed in 1786, here in an uncut copy in the original wrappers. Prunetti, the author of several works on painting and art, offers his thoughts on the great paintings of Rome, the artistic techniques used in their creation, and how to judge them, along with brief lives of the most prominent Italian painters.

•  Original paper wrappers, spine with hand-lettered paper label. Early inked owner’s inscription on front free endpaper; one early inked shouldernote. Some pages with faint hint of foxing, most clean. A very good copy.

For BOOKS IN ITALIAN,  click here.

Robb, David M., & J.J. Garrison. Art in the Western world. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1953. 8vo. Frontis., 1050 pp.; illus.
$22.50

•  Third edition. Architecture, sculpture, painting, and the minor arts from prehistoric times to modern. With 648 black and white illustrations, 4 color plates, and illustrated endpapers.

•  Publisher's cloth. Very good, with only a few dog ears. No dust jacket.

French Translation of the NT withExegesis of Text
 & of PICTURES

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•  Sole edition. A study ofthe iconography of Jesus in Late Roman and Medieval art, from the 3rd to the 12th century. Each chapter (165 in all) covers a particular scene in the life of Jesus, and the text begins with a Catholic translation in French of the relevant passages from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The text is accompanied by illustrations, copious interpretive notes of the iconography and critical commentary, both exegetical and archaeological. Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church, the preliminary leaves including an “approbation” by the Archbishop of Tours and a letter from the Archbishop of Paris.

The book is illustrated with 100 engraved plates and numerous in-text engravings, as well as a frontispiece map of the Holy Land in each volume. The plates are mostly figural illustrations taken from paintings in catacombs and on sarcophagi, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, ivory figurines, murals, etc. The title-pages are printed in black and red ink, and decorated with an engraved vignette.

•  Publisher's red cloth, stamped in gilt on the spines and front covers. Spines sunned and front cover of vol. II slightly sunned along fore-edge also; cloth of spines frayed at extremities and chipped in other places. Hinges (inside) of vol. I a little weak, stitching exposed; corners bumped with cloth damage; pages very shallowly bumped. Ex-library, with shelf labels on spines, institutional bookplates on front pastedowns, pressure-stamp to title-pages and one other page in each volume. Paper very good; pages clean and bright.  (24688)

For BIBLES, TESTAMENTS, *&*
        BIBLE SCHOLARSHIP,  click here.
For SETS,  click here.

Censoring “Satanic” Art

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•  Art criticism, morality, and religion intersect as Rosignoli discusses the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and Michelangelo, among other artists. This Jesuit favorsdemonic and Satanic influence as an explanation for the odious, secular imagery to be found in certain paintings, and praises the beneficial effects of the Virgin Mary’s inspiration. He also advocates exercising stricter ecclesiastical control over the arts, and demands that “obscene” paintings be destroyed.

This early edition of Rosignoli’s work, first published in Bologna in 1696, is decorated with floriated capitals, headpieces, and tailpieces, with an engraved frontispiece lacking in this copy. The volume opens with a dedication to Don Teobaldo Maria Visconti and closes with a thorough index.

•  Sommervogel, VII 154.   Contemporary stiff vellum, spine with title inked in early hand; engraved frontispiece lacking and text block separating from spine from base upwards (with sewing visible). Light discolorations to many pages, inked jottings to front and back pastedowns. A scarce edition of a scarce text.  (36670)

For “Workmen & Laborers” & Including Ruskin'sAttack on Whistler

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•  Facsimile printing of the 1886 Frank F. Lovell & Co. edition: pamphlets presenting Ruskin's perspective on contemporary moral and social issues.

•  Publisher's teal cloth, spines with gilt-stamped title; spines with gilt slightly dimmed and minor extremity wear, front cover of vol. II with a small light smudge. A solid and pleasant set, with its pages very crisp and clean.  (33164)

“My dearest John,” “My dear Girl,” “My dearest Boy,” “My dear Father” . . .

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•  First edition: the correspondence of John James Ruskin, his wife, and their son John, from 1801 through 1843 — an important body of material for scholars of the great art critic.

•  Publisher's red cloth, spines gilt-stamped, in matching slipcase; volume spines sunned, slipcase showing minimal shelfwear. Overall very clean and crisp.  (33160)

Inscribed by the Artist

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•  Illustrated tribute to the American artist, with a foreword by Saroyan and commentary by Ebersole.

Provenance:  Inscribed “To Judy and Ron with best wishes Fletcher Martin 1966" on the half-title and with an impression of that inscription transferred to title-page because of the nature of the book's paper.

•  Publisher's brick-colored cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black, in original dust jacket; jacket sunned and a little soiled with light staining to edges, short tear to each upper edge, and small chips at spine extremities; volume with minimal shelfwear outside and, inside, a touch of generally very faint waterstaining to lower margin across and a short ways up the gutter. Solid, and signed.  (35904)

Grabhorn Press Leaf Book

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•  Concise overview of the development of medieval French illumination, printed in historically appropriate style on deckle-edged pages ruled in red.  One of only 200 copies printed, this volume featuresa particularly lovely original leaf from a 15th-century miniature Book of Hours, as well as Mary Grabhorn's hand-colored and -gilt reproduction of an illumination of the Coronation of the Virgin.

The leaf is on vellum, measures 8.5 x 6 cm (3.375" x 2.375"), has an illuminated floral border in the left margin of the recto and six illuminated initials on the same. The verso has three illuminated initials.

Schulz's text is printed in black and brown in Lutetia type with the pages ruled in pale red.

•  Disbound and Dispersed 120.   Publisher's printed paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped title, in original plain paper dust jacket; jacket showing mild wear and shelf-soiling with short tear at head of spine, volume clean with upper outer corners very slightly bumped. Scattered small spots of foxing, one with a little “halo”; pages otherwise clean. Very attractive.  (37755)

He Was a Member ofSor JUANA's Circle

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•  “Polymath” is the term most often applied to Siguenza y Gongora (1645–1700), and indeed he was a cosmographer, philosopher, chronicler, poet, biographer, historian, cartographer, and priest.

Here he is wearing the hats of a chronicler and a biographer, as he, “an intellectual friend of Sor Juana [Ines de la Cruz] and at the same time a man of science and religiosity, [writes] the history of the convent of Jesus Maria and the biography of some of its notable nuns.” His Parayso occidental is “a classic example of baroque[-era] writing on the monastic life of nuns [in Mexico]” (both quotations from Lavrin, p. 205). As such, the volume is important; and even apart from its association with the Spanish world's Tenth Muse,” it isa basic starting place for the study of nuns, the economics of nunneries, and the political life of the same.

As is increasingly the case with Mexican imprints of the 17th century, it islittle found in the marketplace.

Provenance:  18th-century ownership signature on title-page and first leaf of preliminaries of the Conde del Fresno de la Fuente.

•  Medina, Mexico, 1328; Palau 312973; Asuncion Lavrin, “Cotidianidad y espiritualidad en la vida conventual novohispana: Siglo XVII,” in Memoria del Coloquio Internacional Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz y pensamiento novohispano (1995).   Late 19th-century Mexican quarter dark green morocco with mottled green paper sides; binding rubbed and abraded, front endpapers with an old paper label and remnants of one removed. Pencilling on front fly-leaf and title-page verso; top margins closely cropped occasionally costing top of letters of running heads and foliation. Worming, chiefly in margins but occasionally into the text, not costing words, sometimes repaired; first and last few leaves with old repairs to corners and margins and a bit of text restored in pen and ink. Withal, a good++ copy of important work that is not often on the market.  (34203)

An Art Collector's Estate

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•  Suárez de Toledo seems to have been a serious collector of oil portraits — including one of Hernando Cortés and one of the Queen of France — as well as of religious art, silver, and other “objets d'art.” The several inventories present in this cahier document his passion, with the other documents further telling the story of the complicated settlement of the estate by the heirs.

•  Written by several notaries so hands are varied. Stitching starting to loosen. A very few leaves with small loss of text to a hungry rodent.  (27598)

For MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.

[Sweetser, Moses F.].  Dürer. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1880. 12mo. Frontis., 158 p., 2 pl. [also bound in, his] Rembrant. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1880. 12mo. 162 p., 5 pl. [also bound in, his] Van Dyck. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1880. 12mo. 157 p., 4 pl.
$25.00

•  In Sweetser's series, Artist-biographies. The biographies were issued separately in 15 volumes, then gathered in 5 volumes with three biographies per volume. This is vol. 4 in the gathered series. It must be noted that none of the volumes in the either series indicates it is part of a "set." That is, each volume truly is (and looks like) a stand-alone.

•  Publisher's deep blue cloth stamped in black and gold. Slight fraying to top and bottom of spine. A very good copy.  (5537)

A Big Book Documenting a Big Era

•  “Three themes dominate the period covered by this book . . . the consolidation of the new nation-states . . . religious persecution and the wars between Catholic and Protestant . . . the expansion of Europe over the whole world” (from the dust-jacket). The volume is extensively illustrated in color and black-and-white; this is a work of art reference as well as historical reference.

•  Publisher's terra-cotta cloth, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped title, corners bumped yet cloth pristine, in dust-jacket; wrapper with wear at corners and spine extremities, one short edge tear to upper front edge. Pages age-toned; clean and unmarked.  (26183)

One of 50 Special Copies — Wood Engravings byRuzicka

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•  One of 500 copies and no. 50 of 50 special copies signed by the designer Roderick Stinehour and bound by Judi Conant at Guildhall, VT, with the inclusion ofthree wood engravings by Rudolph Ruzicka printed by the Merrymount Press in addition to the many reproductions prepared for this volume. The correspondence was edited by Elizabeth French Lathem and Edward Connery Lathem, and the text and illustration together well exemplify the collaboration between two giants of the Book Arts during the first half of the 20th century.

The wood engravings are absolutely stunning.

Provenance:  From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Quarter blue cloth with gray paper spine label over lovely marbled paper; issued without a dust jacket.A bright and clean copy.  (37600)

Art/Architecture — Folio Extra — Imposing!

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•  Italian-language work on the art and architecture of the Liberiana basilica in Rome, illustrated with more than 100 impressive full-page engravings (as well as one oversized, folding engraving) of the church’s art and sculpture, along with its architectural detail, plans, and design. Detailed explanations of the plates, which were engraved by Domenico Feltrini, are provided.

This handsomely printed and produced volume forms the second part of the author's “Quattro principali basiliche di Roma,” which also includes works (not present here) on the Vaticana and Lataranense.

•  Publisher's half vellum with marbled paper–covered sides, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather labels; boards a little abraded and showing wear. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate; front fly-leaf with bookseller’s pressure-stamp in upper corner. Occasional light foxing. A handsomely produced, still very impressive volume.  (11659)

For ARCHITECTURE,  click here.

(Walker, John). Walker, John. Self-portrait with donors: Confessions of an art collector.  Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.
$12.50

For other BIOGRAPHIES (not all of art-world figures) —  click here.

Waugh! The Pre-Raphaelites!

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•  “No-one else was writing about the Pre-Raphaelites in the 1920's, and it is therefore interesting to know what an intelligent and independent-minded author thought about them, especially during their most unfashionable phase. We must, of course, be thankful that Waugh became a novelist and not an art-historian, but he does deserve to be remembered as one of the most distinguished pioneers of the Victorian revival” (44).

This is the first published edition of Waugh's essay, which was first printed privately by Alastair Graham in 1926. As Christopher Sykes and Christopher Wood describe it in the preface and postscript, respectively, Waugh's account of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is not very scholarly (for one, Waugh makes biased remarks about William Holman Hunt, who married not one but two of his relatives, the sisters Fanny and Edith Waugh); however it is regarded as the first serious bit of writing by one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. A commission followed to write the biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Waugh's first full-length book.

The text was designed by Robert Hamilton Dalrymple using Monophoto Modern Extended 7 and printed on Zerkall mould-made paper at the Westerham Press, illustrated withsix plates reproducing portraits drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, of each other. The binding, in navy blue cloth with the title stamped in red on the front cover and spine, and matching red endpapers, was designed by Hunter & Foulis of Edinburgh. Of an edition limited to 475 copies, this is number 118, written in manuscript below the colophon.

•  Binding as above, in protective mylar wrappers. Short marginal tear to bottom of one leaf, elselike new.  (30683)

Berhardt Wall's Works:
“A Prize of the Cognoscenti, a Delight for Collectors, & the Pride of Librarians”
(The BIG BOOK)

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•  Weber's account of the life and works of Wall, known as the “Postcard King,” an American artist, historian, and pioneer of etching. Originally published in 1974 as a miniature volume {see below}, the work appears here in anexpanded full-sized presentation designed and typeset by Castle Press and printed by Patrick Reagh Printers, limited to 195 copies (this example unnumbered). Like the first edition, this one is illustrated with mounted intaglio reproductions by Anthony Kroll — but this one additionally features a number of examples of Wall's work printed from the original plates, five colored photogravure reproductions of etchings by Wall, and oneoriginal postcard (with writing on the reverse).

•  Publisher's speckled paper–covered boards with gray cloth shelfback, front cover with printed paper label, in plain paper dust jacket with printed spine label and in coordinating paper and cloth slipcase; jacket spine very slightly sunned, slipcase and volume clean and crisp. A beautiful tribute to an important American illustrator.  (37130)

Big Painting / Miniature Tribute

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•  Msgr. Weber's remarks on da Vinci's masterpiece, opening with an affixed 800 lire postage stamp marking Italy's commemoration of the 500th anniversary. This is one of 400 copies printed at the Castle Press of Pasadena, bound by Roswell Bookbinders of Phoenix.

•  Publisher's maroon cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and the Press's lamp device, spine with gilt-stamped title. A crisp, fresh copy.  (35728)

Haters Gonna Hate:   Whistler vs. the Critics  —  The Unauthorized First Edition

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•  First edition:  Collected exchanges of letters in which the artist harangues his critics, including arch-nemesis John Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, Tom Taylor, Harry Quilter, Theodore Child, and many others. Whistler's sarcasm and venom know no bounds, nor does his commitment to defending his aesthetic philosophy.

This pirated edition, quickly suppressed by Whistler, was produced immediately after the artist first gave and then withdrew publishing permission from the American journalist Sheridan Ford. It thus preceded the author's printing, and differs notably from the later, officially published text, providingmore Wilde correspondence as well as record of the final bitter spat between Ford and Whistler — and it gives only Ford's name on the cover, spine, and title-page, with no mention of Whistler himself until he appears in the preliminary note.

While Ford used the Stokes name on this Antwerp printing (and again later in the same year on a Parisian printing to which he resorted after Whistler's representatives successfully halted the Belgian production and confiscated most of the existing copies), Stokes denied having been involved in any way.

Provenance:  Inked inscription of noted educator and book collector Jahu Dewitt Miller on final blank page.

•  For the story of Ford's pirated edition, see: E.R. & J. Pennell's Life of Whistler, 1908, V. II chap. 34, pp. 100–13.   Publisher's heavy gray paper wrappers, front wrapper with title stamped in red; spine creased and sunned, corners rubbed, rear wrapper very unobtrusively reinforced. Now housed in a violet cloth–covered chemise and a quarter deep purple morocco and violet cloth–covered slip case, with outer box edge and case spine and front cover sunned, case showing light shelfwear overall. Front two fly-leaves with short tear from upper margin; a very few instances of light spotting, generally not occurring within text. With laid-in auction catalogue information regarding publication and textual details; final blank page with inked inscription as above. Now very uncommon.  (36545)

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