Search

Number 104 of 150 numbered copies of this facsimile edition of Estève’s remarkable, near-miniature wartime sketchbook (1939-1940), with introductory booklet by Françoise Chapon. Estève (1904-2001) was essentially self-taught, working under the clear influence of Cézanne and Braque, and hovering between representation and abstraction. His wartime notebook is a truly exceptional representation of a French soldier’s experience, superbly reproduced here by Éditions des Cendres.

First edition of Leonor Fini’s playing cards, reissued several times, but rare in this first edition by Acanthe. The set is as issued, comprising 52 cards, one joker and one blank card. Hoffman, Französische Spielkarten des XX jahrhunderts 79-103; Cinque Siècles de cartes a jouer, Bibliothèque Nationale, 1963 n° 267; Bielefeld, Deutsches Spiekarten Museum, Inv 663

First edition, copy numbered 64 of 722 copies (after 28 signed copies on papier vélin, total edition of 750) with ten superb photographic portraits of Fini in her celebrated bird and animal masks by André Ostier. The four plates are Fini’s designs for costume or ballet.

A striking ‘game of goose’ celebrating Franco-American friendship, the 1889 Paris Exposition universelle and the newly-built Eiffel tower. It was issued as an advertisement for the doll manufacturer Jumeau, who made luxury ceramic dolls under the ‘Bébé Jumeau’ trademark. The tower has 63 game positions, with the goose positions occupied by Jumeau dolls, the negative positions occupied by German dolls - a piece of anti-German propaganda and a dig at the cheap German-manufactured dolls which competed with Jumeau’s premium products. One German doll falls down a well, another off a bridge, one is stuck in jail, while a broken doll is the ‘death’ square, 58. On either side of the tower are Franco-American dolls holding their respective national flags. The Statue of Liberty is seen in the distance beyond the Paris Exposition grounds.

A caption at the foot requests that the game be mounted on card and kept as a souvenir. This example is as issued, and though minimally restored at the folds is a rather remarkable survival. Seville, 56. The Royal Game of the Goose four hundred Years of printed Board Games. Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Grolier Club, February 23 - May 14, 2016.

A spectacular separately-issued print in the style of a facsimile of an original medieval roll, listing the names of all those who crossed the Channel at the Norman Conquest a fought at the Battle of Hastings. Said to have been preserved in the later Battle Abbey, in fact no such single document existed r survived. Nonetheless the notion of a definitive list of the Norman conquerors was popular, not least among those seeking to trace direct lineage with the French medieval aristocracy. The print is undated but was advertised by Chatto and Windus in 1879.

First edition. The Gin Act (or ‘Tippling Act’) of 1751 was designed to reduce consumption of raw spirits — regarded by contemporaries as one of the main causes of crime in London. By prohibiting gin distillers from selling to unlicensed merchants and increasing fees charged to merchants, it eliminated small gin shops, thereby restricting the distribution of gin to larger distillers and retailers. It was widely supported, not least by William Hogarth, who issued his famous Beer Street and Gin Lane prints in the same year. ‘Hogarth's illustration of the evils of gin-drinking was published as a pair with ‘Beer Street’, as part of a campaign against the uncontrolled production and sale of cheap gin. It culminated in the Gin Act of 1751, through which the number of gin shops was greatly reduced’ (Tate Gallery).

Though separately published with a general title for a complete sitting of Parliament, individual Acts of Parliament were paginated to be bound together in yearly volumes hence the pagination 975-995 here. ESTC N52491 (NLS, New College Oxford, UCLA Clark and Kansas only, though copies are under-recorded since they are often catalogued within volumes and sets of the Acts of Parliament.).

A superb survey of turn-of-the century British domestic architecture by an important French photographer who used cyanotype to notable effect. These examples of seaside ‘cottages’ in East Kent and Sussex depicts an array of then recently constructed high quality houses, a good number of which survive. Broadly within the Arts and Crafts tradition, the houses fuse a variety of older English vernacular styles with modern innovations, notably in the range of moulded and cut bricks and tiles.

Albert Lévy (1847-1931) was both a pioneering and prolific architectural photographer, unusual for his time in working on both sides of the Atlantic, with studios in Paris and New York. Characteristically, his collections were issued as cyanotypes printed directly from the original glass negatives. His collections included numerous sequences of French, British and American buildings of the Gilded Age, but are now very rare indeed. Jisc locates no UK copies. FirstSearch locates US copies at Columbia, Princeton and Lawrence Technological University only.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘A Winter’s Tale’, Act IV, scene 3:

‘the fairest
flowers o' the season
Are our Carnations and streak’d Gillyflowers’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘As you like it’, Act II, Scene 7:

‘Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly.
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Richard III’, Act IV, scene 3:

‘Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which in their summer beauty kiss’d each other’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Henry V’, Act I, scene 1:

‘The Strawberry grows underneath the Nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the Summer-Grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Henry V’, Act V, scene 2:

‘The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled Cowslip, Burnet and green Clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness and nothing teems
But hateful Docks, rough Thistles, Kecksies, Burs,
Losing both beauty and utility’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Hamlet’, Act IV, scene 7:

‘There is a Willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of Crow-flowers, Nettles, Daisies, and Long purples’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Primroses illustrating ‘Twelfth Night’, Act 3, scene 1:

‘Cesario, by the Roses of the Spring,
By maidenhood, honour, truth and every thing,
I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph, from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Twelfth Night’, Act I, scene 1:

‘That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of Violets,
Stealing and giving odour!’

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Titus Andronicus’ Act II, Scene 3:

‘The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with Moss and baleful Mistletoe...
But straight they told me they would bind me here
Unto the body of a dismal Yew,
And leave me to this miserable death’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating Ophelia’s ‘mad speech’ in Hamlet:

‘There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love,
remember. And there is Pansies, that’s for thoughts.
... There’s Fennel for you, and Columbines. There’s Rue for you,
and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays.
O, you must wear your Rue with a difference! There’s a Daisy. I
would give you some Violets, but they wither’d all when my father
died’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph, the title-page from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating roses, honeysuckle and thistles with the quotation:

‘And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything’ (’As You Like It’, Act II, scene 1, the Duke in the Forest of Arden).

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘The Winter’s Tale’:

‘Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale Primeroses...
... bold oxlips and
The Crown Imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The Flower-de-luce being one’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Act II, scene 1 (she incorrectly gives ‘scene 2’), Titania’s speech:

The seasons alter; hoary headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the Crimson Rose,
And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet Summer Buds
Is, as in mockery, set.’