art & architecture

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 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).

Among the most influential of all writing manuals, and still used today for the teaching and learning of English round hand and other scripts. Twenty-five penmen contributed ornate and imaginative writing specimens for Bickham to engrave, including best masters of the day: E. Austin, John Bland, William and Gabriel Brooks, Zachary Chambers, Joseph Champion, Willington Clark, Richard Morris and Samuel Vaux. The texts they produced included advice and verses on fine writing, on the virtues of education and application, trade, business and the use of written instruments of commerce, the latter giving examples of bills, letters of credit and promissory notes. These were all engraved by George Bickham with the assistance of his son (George the younger) and John Bickham (another son or perhaps a brother). George the Elder was considered one of the finest English engravers of the age, having been apprenticed to a writing master and becoming expert in the reproduction of script in print. ‘Joseph Champion claimed Bickham surpassed his master by being the first to cut through wax on copper without tracing the design first, thus transmitting the master’s original more faithfully’ (Kim Sloan, ODNB). His work in The Universal Penman is notable not just for its elegant fluidity but for its witty use of illustrative vignette headpieces and other ornaments, sometimes adapting scenes from Watteau and other artists. Three plates contain excellent examples of trompe l’oeil, appearing to show cards laid onto the page, when in reality they are skilfully engraved parts of original design.

This is the fourth edition, printed from the plates of the preceding editions, which bore Bickham’s imprint (the first two issued in fifty-two parts between 1733 and 1741). Overton’s name is given on the frontispiece and the imprints of both title-pages. The original numbering of parts is retained, each containing four plates, but a continuous pagination supplied. Copies of all early editions are scarce in such good condition as this, frequently being subject to loss or damage through repeated use and removal of plates. Percy Muir, ‘The Bickhams and their Universal Penman’, The Library, 4th ser., v. 25, Dec. 1944.

Zurich-born artist, watercolourist and art publisher Rudolf Dikenmann shaped the image of Switzerland for travellers and collectors with his highly finished aquatint views, printed in tints of black and blue and painstakingly coloured and finished by hand, sometimes resembling enamel painting. ‘The Zurich art publishing company of Rudolf Dikenmann (1793-1884) and his son Johann Rudolf Dikenmann (1832-1888) shaped the image of Switzerland... simply because of the sheer volume of the views produced in the Dikenmann studio. The ‘engravings’ were produced from sketched originals, using the aquatint technique. They came on to the market in their thousands: in petit or folio format, as vignettes on notepaper, as a simple black print or as a two-tone print in blue/black. Some of the high-quality typographic prints were coloured by hand by Dikenmann’s daughters Anna and Louise, and by his younger brother Johannes. Rudolf Dikenmann, who had worked for Peter Birmann in Basel after completing his apprenticeship with Orell Füssli & Co. in Zurich’ (Felix Graf, ‘The Image of Switzerland in the time of Gottfried Keller’, Swiss National Museum blog).

These four views, collected by a contemporary English traveller, are after designs by Heinrich Siegfried and comprise: Hôtel Baur au Lac de Zurich; Luzerne prise du Schweizerhof; Les Glaciers de Grindelwald and Lugano prise du pied du Mont Salvador.

By an otherwise unidentified female artist, this is a rare large-format album of lithographs of the famous catholic Bavarian passion play at Oberammergau. The artist’s name is given only as initials ‘M. C. S. D’ on the plates and wrapper, but this copy bears a contemporary manuscript addition to the initials, which thus reads ‘M. C. S. Dawkins done by Herself’. It is additionally inscribed ‘with love’ to Major M. G. Best.

Performed decennially since 1634, the Oberammergau plays told the story of Christ’s passion, with a large cast drawn from local villages forming immense tableaux vivants with spoken biblical texts in the vernacular. In the nineteenth century it became a major attraction for well-to-do Grand Tourists and drew significant numbers of English visitors (so much so that the pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook established an Oberammergau office in 1880). The passion play was widely reported in contemporary English-language journals, adding to its attraction among English visitors (mainly protestant) who were curious about this ancient catholic theatrical tradition. We have been unable to discover anything substantial about the artist, but its fair to assume she made the journey to Oberammergau herself. WorldCat lists the V&A copy only in the UK. In the US there are copies at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake (IL) and WRHS (OH).

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.

A rare and outlandish canard depicting a winged harpie, with the caption ‘Ce monstre afreux son corps est de la force d’un taureau / d’un an il a vingt deux pieds de longueur’.

This is a version of several contemporary ‘Peruvian monster’ prints issued as satirical allusions to Marie Antoinette, who was widely accused of accused of rapaciously squandering the royal treasury. They were inspired by a pamphlet of 1784 titled Description historique d’un monstre symbolique pris vivant sur les bords du lac Fagua près de Santa Fé par les soins de Francisco Xaveiro de Meunrios, comte de Barcelone — the pseudonym Francisco Xaveiro de Meunrios probably referring to Louis Stanislas Xavier, Count of Provence, Louis XVI’s brother. Harpie prints then appeared in considerable number (the Bibliothèque nationale holds at least thirteen, most printed in Paris, a number of which are dated to 1784) and were popular in both Paris and other French cities. Not found in WorldCat or among the similar prints in the BnF.

An attractive and elaborate example of German devotional Klosterarbeit, typical of enclosed communities, usually (but not always) convents of nuns. The decorative border here is an exuberant baroque combination of flowers, leaves and stems enclosing the parchment painting, within a border of gold cut-paper stars on a feathery cut blue paper. Dating these pieces is not easy, since traditional styles were both conservative and enduring. The support here is laid paper with a partially visible watermark with monogram (SME or SVE?)which we have so far been unable to identify (the applied silk work partially obscuring it). A small manuscript note on an old paper reinforcement at the back bears script in what appears to be an eighteenth-century hand.

Saint Paul appears with his customary attributes of a sword, recalling his martyrdom (he was beheaded in Rome in AD 67) and book, representing his letters in the New Testament.

First edition, in an exceptionally accomplished binding. This is an account of a summer visit by students at the pre-eminent Paris school of book arts to Lille, Ostend, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. The entire production (text, type-founding, typography, illustration, mise en page, printing, engraving, photogravure and binding) is by students named on the colophon. The named binders presumably place the book in wrappers, but the additional elegant contemporary gilt tooled binding is unsigned, though likely also an advanced student production. Among the contributors to the text is one ‘Lanoë’ who must be the noted binder Charles Lanoë who was one of the first doreurs (finishers) to study at the École Estienne. He went on to create many fine bindings in the early decades of the twentieth century,

First edition of this very rare collection devoted to the street life of Paris, as observed by an imagined flâneur, some thirty years before Baudelaire defined the characteristics of the archetypal literary and aesthetic wanderer. The plates depict various familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Paris life — the title plate depicts the widow Lagarde, a dog and cat groomer, while other plates show browsers at a book stall in the Rue de Grès, walkers in the Luxembourg gardens, female basket carriers at la Halle, various vendors and hawker and fashionable women in the Boulevard de l’Opera. Complete sets are exceptionally rare (the British Museum catalogue lists only four of the series, for example).

Forest was a prolific caricaturist, working alongside both Grandville and Daumier for satirical journals such as La Silhouette and La Caricature. WorldCat lists only the Morgan copy (Michael Sadleir; from the library of Gordon N. Ray). Inventaire du fonds français après 1800, v. VIII, p. 101

An intriguing homemade book created by an aspiring young writer, copying extracts from a popular juvenile title, Marmaduke Multiply, published in 1817 and designed to teach multiplication with engaging illustrations. In this version, a Francis (or possibly Frances) Taylor has copied extracts from the book using different hands, without much thought to order. Some are captioned ‘with my left hand’, another ‘half with my right hand’ as though he or she were deciding which was the best hand, or simply trying writing and drawing with an unfamiliar hand. Given the general insistence on right hand writing in the period it is an unusual survival, albeit rudimentary, an evidence of active learning activities in the acquisition of early literacy.

First edition of this rare manual for Giacometti’s evolution of the game of chess Il Giuoco della guerra which uses a board game format to teach the principles of military strategy, tactics, and fortification. It belongs to a genre of military games that developed in Europe during the eighteenth century — precursors to the Prussian Kriegsspiel and of modern board-based wargames. The pieces had names such as ‘generals’, ‘cannons’, ‘mortars’ and fortresses’. The engraved plate, dedicated by Pietro Remondini to the Cavaliere Brancaleone shows the field of battle, with double chess boards, separated by a symbolic river, all within an elaborate classical border of panelled friezes. The engraved frontispiece shows two allegorical female figures representing strategic warfare and honour or victory), flanking a large shield bearing a crowned eagle and a plinth bearing the double-headed image of Janus is behind.
It was reprinted several times and translated into French. WorldCat: Cleveland Public Library, Bodley, Dutch National Library only.

Headed ‘Tanhauser. 1er Acte. 1ere Scène’ this brief manuscript note describes and illustrates designs for each act of the production of Tannhäuser consistent with the infamous Paris production of March 1861.
Act I Scene 1 (for the orgiastic ballet of the Venusberg) is described in just over 5 lines as ‘Une vaste grotte souterraine éclairée par un jour fantastique, au fond tombe une cascade dont les eaux vont se perdre dans un lac bleu. A gauche apparition d’une grotte voluptueuse’. A sketch diagram shows the arrangement of two curtains and three wings. Scene 2 is described as a ‘Une belle vallée éclairée par un soleil brillant, au fond à droite le Wartburg à droite, à gauche, le Hersvelberg, à droite un chemin descendant du Wartburg, sur une éminence, une image de la vierge’, with a diagram showing the arrangement of curtain, wings and position of the Wartburg castle on the right. Overleaf the scene change for Act I, set in the Minnesingers’ Hall in the Wartburg castle is described in just over 8 lines with a diagram showing the receding perspective of the majestic hall, together with 5 lines describing the return to the valley of second scene of Act I for the final act, with changing lighting effects for dusk, night, dawn and day with clouds for the apparition of Venus.
The instructions, a brief outline sketch rather than detailed designs or instructions, follow the arrangements of the Paris version, modified from the Dresden premier of 1845, with the ballet brought forward to the very first scene to accommodate Parisian expectations. While the final design of the production was divided between three scenographers (Charles-Antoine Cambon, Édouard Desplechin and Auguste Alfred Rubé) these notes have the character of a preliminary overview, or perhaps a note for potential lighting effects. Detailed designs, maquettes and several contemporary prints exist for the production, and provide an interesting comparison for this ephemeral and unsigned note. The thumbnail sketch for Act I Scene 2 sems to confirm, for example, that it is a prior sketch rather than one made by an eyewitness to the performance, with its rather different arrangement of the rocky precipice for the Wartburg castle depicted in the plans and prints. The identity of its maker remains thus far unknown, but is likely to have been a member of one of the various workshops and teams tasked with the overall conception of this momentous performance.
Wagner’s Paris Tannhäuser ranks as one of the most infamous and most-discussed opera performances of all time ― while it was greeted with jeers and critical disdain and was cancelled after the third night it cemented Wagner’s European cult, due in large part to the essay published by an attentive member of the audience, Charle Baudelaire, who in the following days rushed his seminal critique of the performance and defence of Wagner into print as Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris.

Bernard Hoepffner (1946-2017) was a noted French translator of ‘difficult’ works in English, a major part of he European literary landscape, who counted works by Joyce, Orwell, Twain, Melville, Amis, Philip Sidney, Seamus Heaney among his many acclaimed translations. Polymathic and largely self-taught as a translator, he had trained as an architect. It was presumably during this training that he created this unique and unpublished collection of abstract designs in indian in and watercolour. Each of the 20 designs bears a title: naissance, espoir déçu, reflets d’une pensée, être agressif, être passif, un desolé, perspective, rêve, rather like a set of enigmatic tarot cards for reflection and meditation. He dedicates it ‘à Dazet, vers Jean, pour Abis’. By way of a preface he simply types ‘Pas de préface’, and as a postface he writes: ‘il ne faut pas confondre Minotaure avec Minautaure’ and gives a date of 29 April 1965’.

Hoepffner spent many years in Britain, first moving there as a young man. He worked variously a furniture restorer and smallholder, before finding his vocation as a translator. He served a president of ATLAS (Association
for the Promotion of Literary Translation) and died tragically at the age of 71, swept from rocks by the sea near his home in Pembrokeshire in 2017.

One of several designs created by the artist for her own ex libris, this one with a scrolling arabesque device to the upper portion and her name in full below, with the strokes of every letter terminating in a cross.

One of several designs created by the artist for her own ex libris, this one with a vulture and a cobra, reminiscent of several of her miniature paintings in the orientalist style from the same period.

One of several designs created by the artist for her own ex libris, this one with a three-barred cross resembling the Maronite cross and the artist’s initials in an omega shaped cartouche at the foot. She gives her full name on a scroll at the foot. We have hitherto found no record of Mariette Lydis’ bookplate, nor indeed of books belonging to her, either with or without bookplates.

One of several designs created by the artist for her own ex libris, this one with an intertwining vine and two female deer, and the artist’s name on a scroll. We have hitherto found no record of Mariette Lydis’ bookplate, nor indeed of books belonging to her, either with or without bookplates.