French

First edition of Mandiargues’ third collection, mainly comprising prose poems, illustrated with seven surrealist designs by Bona. Number 102 of 600 copies, signed and initialled in pencil by Mandiargues.
‘Sensations are the point of departure in [Mandiarges’] journey to a land of fantastic metamorphoses which, toute reflexion faite, convey an impression of permanence and truth. A former disciple of Breton,
Mandiargues circumvents the traditional domains of Surrealism in order to enter the confines of an innocent universe that is revealed by pure sensation. “Donner legende aux faits de neige et de pluie” -
this is the first step in his venture.’ (Mark Temmer, ‘André Pieyre de Mandiargues’, Yale French Studies, 1964, No. 31, Surrealism (1964), pp. 99-104)

A popular pocket dream dictionary abridged from Vulson de la Colombière’s influential Le Palais des curieux first published in 1660 and widely disseminated in popular form. The foot of the final page includes a series of numbers offered as the most likely to be drawn in the national lottery. René Helot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie (1928). 12

Mandiargues eroto-surrealist poem ‘Dalila Exaltée’ paired with Bona’s extraordinary etched plate, in the first volume of this important series whose aim was to create a dialogue between contemporary poetry and modern printmaking.
Published under the direction of Odette Lazar-Vernet, the Paroles Peintes series was dedicated to the presentation of otherwise unpublished poetry and original etchings by an international roster of modernist artists. It ran to five volumes between 1962 and 1975. This is the first volume and presents the work of Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues alongside the work of Chagall, Ernst and Braque, among others.
This copy is number 193 copies of 200 copies (there were also 58 hors commerce copies). The texts are 14 poems by Aragon, Arp, Albert-Birot, Follain, Guillevic, Joyeux, Laude, Lescure, Liberati, Mandiargues, Paulhan, De Solier, Tapié and Tardieu paired with 14 plates by Chagall, Magnelli, Zadkine, Gilioli, Ubac, Bissière, Jacobsen, Fiorini, Ernst, Braque, Dufour, Lepatre and Vieillard.

The exhibition comprised twenty of the fabric collages Bona is now best known for, all illustrated in colour here. Introductory essay.

A rare surrealist broadside, subscribed by André Breton, Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues among 29 others, against and exhibition and conference held at the Galerie Kléber by the right wing abstract artists Georges Mathieu and Simon Hantaï. The event, known as Les Ceremonies commemorated the Catholic Inquisition’s 1277 condemnation for heresy of the teachings of the Aristotelian scholar Siger de Brabant at the University of Paris, whereby the church attempted to halt the revival of classical thought in the Middle Ages. The Surrealists, shocked by the religious and deliberately reactionary nature of this event, responded with this broadside Coup de Semonce (’Warning Shot’) illustrated by Bona.

First edition (after the few grand papiers copies issued simultaneously) of Bona’s surrealist were/she-wolf novella, inscribed: ‘à Jacqueline Piatier en sincère hommage Bona de Mandiargues’ (Piatier was a critic for Le Monde and founder of its supplement Le Monde des livres in 1967). The cover reproduces a detail from Michael’s Maier’s alchemical emblem book Atalanta Maier (1617).

First edition, number 144 of 200 copies. Excerpts from the French philosopher Jean Grenier’s forthcoming autobiography (Gallimard, 1957) published for the ‘Chemin des Sources’ series by the Librairie Franco-Egyptienne in Cairo. It includes two small vignettes by Bona de Mandiargues (née Tibertelli), one a flying bird, the other a surrealist crouching fish-woman. Grenier is perhaps best remembered as mentor to the young Albert Camus at the Grand Lycée of Algiers. At the time of publication Bona was married to poet Pierre de Mandiargues, and was integrated into the surrealist circle around André Breton. Rare: Worldcat lists the Bn and Bibliothèque Jerôme Doucet copies in France, the Harvard copy in the US and another at the American University, Cairo.

Number 24 of 35 copies with the plates by Bona (of which the first five copies were on Van Gelder paper, the remainder on pur fil Marais, as here). Signed by Bona in pencil. The collection (the poet’s first) was first published (unillustrated) in Mexico in 1942. The Paris edition contains parallel text in Spanish and French (the latter translated by Jean-Clarence Lambert).

Bona creates a brooding surrealist counterpart the poetry of Paz. The diplomat-poet was closely associated with the Surrealists in Paris in the immediate post-war years and conducted a long and convoluted affair with Bona (with the full knowledge of her husband Pierre de Mandiargues).

First edition, number 22 of 50 special copies with a rare signed etching by Bona. Partly autobiographical this is one of the most illuminating retrospective accounts of Bona’s life and art, presented as an alphabetical gazeteer of influences, themes and ideas (amitié, dessin, De Pisis, echo. jeux,paradoxes, poèmes, solitude, tisssus, etc).

A placard in the form of a full-sized bread board, reproducing a collage by Bona, a gallery text to the verso in Italian. The exhibition Corruption domestique was held at the Galleria Cortina in Milan in March 1972.

First edition, inscribed by both author and artist, with a drawing by the latter, of this comprehensive illustrated account of Bona’s artistic career. It describes her earliest inspiration in Italy (notably Giotto, De Chirico and her uncle, Filippo de Pisis), her surrealist influenced canvases of postwar Paris and the fabric collages for which she has become best known for. Mandiargues engages with the artist’s iconography, notably the motif of the snail which became a touchstone after Bona’s pregnancy for the rest of her career.

First edition, number 68 of 80 copies signed and numbered by Bona, with all four lithographs also signed. Four poems by de Mandiargues, his final works, completed just before his death, on the cities of Rome, Berlin, Siena and Paris.

Afia Rezk, a Syrian textile artist now living and working in Paris, creates large scale textile installations using traditional weaving techniques. Here she has combined woven textile with monotypes printed from textiles to create a haunting artist’s book meditating on her own personal narratives woven into text/ile. Afia Rezk was born in 1980. She arrived in France with her family in May 2018. From childhood, influenced by Syrian crafts, she has used organic elements, living materials in constant mutation under the effect of oxidation, reduction and biodegradation. Her plastic research combines painting, collage, print, ceramics, weaving and installation. She studied Arabic literature at Damascus University before turning to the visual arts; she worked extensively in Syria before fleeing the war, leading workshops in both art and theatre as interactive practices to help families in emergency situations, as well as children and female victims of war. She has exhibited in Syria, Lebanon, France, Sweden, Swi and Germany and is a member the Agency of Artists in Exile in France.

‘In the garden of our house in southern Syria, the olive trees were imbued with love and blessings. This small patch of land was the site of my daily rituals. Every morning, after my walk, I eagerly returned to slip behind the house into the shade of the olive trees. I would take off my shoes before entering, as if I were stepping into a sacred place. Under the trees, I breathed in serenity, as if the earth itself pulsed to my own rhythms. Often, my mother would join me with her maté, and together we would share precious moments and stories etched in my heart and memory.
Last July, approximately 36 villages were burned in my native region of Suwayda by armed groups affiliated with what is known as the ‘interim government’. Most of these houses had land planted with olive trees.
Burning an olive tree is like burning a memory, rituals, seasons, stories, and roots.
This work is an attempt to keep alive the trace of what remains. Les murmures de l’olivier’.

The largest and most elaborate of Diane de Bournazel’s recent books, Rondes de nuit explores the possibilities and mysteries of the night, both from the human perspective of sleep, rest and dreaming, as well as the unseen life of the natural world in darkness and the infinite expanses of the night sky. At the centre of every page is a circular void, corresponding with depictions of the full moon at either end of the book, which can be seen in every opening. Each circular hole is illuminated to form a rebus or mandala, sometimes reminiscent of the visionary medieval manuscripts of the contemplative mystic, Hildegard of Bingen (notably Scivias and Liber divinorum operum). Elsewhere, figures float in space (one can be rocked back-and-forth as a moveable part) or participate in an eternal dance of life (and death). Lest we should see this as an evocation of the books of a distant past, a tiny floating space station against the night sky reminds of the artist’s contemporaneity.

The title, Contre jours, is enigmatic, firstly suggesting ‘backlighting’ (a literal translation of contre jour) in optical terms but also, more playfully, a sense of days against days, or of other oppositions such as dark and light. This particular book teems with human life, perhaps more than any other recent De Bournazel creation — from the figures and faces crowding the margins, sometimes only half seen, the silhouettes of figures against the sun, to the masses of tiny figures in squares and rectangles and crowded into miniature tower blocks. The cover bears an inlaid miniature, with two faces or masks drawn on the reverse of a convex glass disc.

First and only edition of this elegant little volume, a collection of witty verses and songs dedicated by the obviously cultivated members of the Normandy Société du Havre to their wives and daughters, sometimes on the occasion of a marriage or some other event. The sole copy located is in the Le Havre municipal library.

First edition. Copies of Louis XVI’s will were widely circulated in facsimile at the time of the Restoration of the monarchy after the fall of Napoleon. They were first printed as official copies engraved from the original manuscripts, circulated to members of the houses of representatives and issued for sale, as here in their officially sanctioned version engraved directly by Piquet from tracings of the original manuscript. The final page of the four-page facsimile of Louis’ will bears the imprint: ‘Calqué par Pierre Picquet sur l’original écrit de la main du Roi’. Picquet is described as ‘graveur d’écritures’ in the imprint, a speciality for which he appears to enjoyed royal patronage. His finely-engraved copies were widely pirated by enterprising engravers and booksellers and sold to the public in Paris in various other forms. Besides his facsimiles, Picquet engraved several writing manuals.

Louis XVI’s last will and testament, written on December 25, 1792, in the Temple prison, is a deeply personal, religious document in which the deposed king proclaimed his innocence, forgave his enemies, and entrusted his family to God. He reaffirmed his Catholic faith, urged his son not to seek revenge for his death, and expressed hope for the unity of France. It is accompanied here by a letterpress account of the king’s last days, together with the circumstances of his and Marie-Antoinette’s will. There are also engraved copies of both their signatures, together with those of their children Élisabeth Marie and Louis (both also executed).

Velcurio’s popular textbook of Aristotelian physics, printed at Lyon by Louis Cloquemin and Étienne Michel, here with an early English binding and provenance.

Johannes Velcurio or Johannes Bernhardi of Feldkirch (1490-1534) was professor of rhetoric and physics at the university of Wittenberg, where he was a humanist colleague of Melanchthon. This posthumously published Commentarium on Aristotle’s physics first appeared in Tubingen in 1542 and ran to at least twenty five editions before 1595, including those from in Basel, Erfurt, Cologne, Tübingen, Strasbourg, Wittenberg, Lyon, and London. The fourth book is devoted to Aristotle’s De anima. In England, as elsewhere it was used as a university textbook and appears, for example, among the small textbooks purchased by students at Cambridge (see P. Gaskell, Books bought by Whitgift’s Pupils in the 1570s, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7, 3 (1979), pp. 284-293). It is unclear who the ‘John Freeman’ who inscribed the title-page in Greek at an early date was, but several John Freemans appear in the Cambridge University registers in the last years of the sixteenth century.

The binding bears identical blindstamped centrepiece tools to a contemporary London binding illustrated by David Pearson in English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 as Fig 3.35 (BL 1492.f.43, Selneccer, Evangeliorum et epistolarum dominicalium, Frankfurt, 1575) with similar spine bands and blind-ruled borders. At the front and rear are two endleaves (each) using waste apparently from an unidentified edition of Justinian’s Institutes, each with further early notes (mainly pen tests).

First edition of this souvenir account of a balloon ascent and parachute descent made by the pioneering French aeronaut, Élisa Garnerin, in Italy. An early pioneer of parachuting, Élisa had already made numerous drops in Paris and further afield in France, her performances often attracting enormous crowds. More than any other contemporary woman, it might be said without undue irony that her career was one of ups and downs — her celebrity as a balloonist and parachutist met with considerable opposition from the police, who found the crowds she drew to be troublesome, and her business probity was frequently questioned by her associates.

The illustrations in this pamphlet include a version of her circular portrait by Bouchardy made in Paris using the physionotrace apparatus invented by Gille-Louis Chrétien designed to copy physical features and simultaneously reduce them to an engraved plate. The folding plate shows Élisa borne aloft in an elegant gondola beneath her balloon, and then the gondola released from the balloon for her parachute descent.

First edition of the first technical manual on etching, by one the greatest engravers of his era, which remained the fundamental source for artists and printers well into the nineteenth century. En Français dans le Texte calls Bosse ‘Remarquable technicien, il sut garder à l eau-forte sa légèreté tout en lui donnant la rigueur du burin’. Several chapters here are devoted to preparation of the plates and the varnishes, others cover the actual techniques of engraving and etching, and the final section is devoted to the construction of the press and its operation. The illustrations are frequently reproduced in histories of engraving and print. Bigmore, Bibliography of Printing 72; Cicognara 251, En Français dans le Texte 92.