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Copy number one, with twelve original watercolour drawings by George Barbier (including those for the wrappers), a grand papier copy printed on vieux japon, and a double suite of illustrations (on chine and japon, one in colour one in outline). This is the first of the three special tirage de tête copies, each containing one third of the thirty-six original Barbier watercolours, this the primary copy, with cover designs. The total edition was of 1091 copies on various papers.

This is one of Barbier’s last illustrative works – he died in 1932 at the age of 50 and at the height of his celebrity, already recognised as one of the greatest French illustrators of his century and subsequently regarded as a father of the Art Deco movement. Gautier’s orientalist novel provided the perfect inspiration for Barbier’s ambiguously eroticised designs, including one of the most immediately recognisable wrapper designs of the era. His finely-wrought watercolours were reduced in reproduction (though not the signed original of the cover) and they retain pencil notes and guidelines for preparing Eugène Gasperini’s woodblocks.

Barbier’s many jewel-like designs for fashion and the ballet and his book illustrations have long been collectible, of course, and he has more recently been the object of a gradual reclamation as a gay artist (despite an absence of any concrete evidence of his sexuality). It is notable he left so little by way of biographical record, and that he was to some extent overlooked or forgotten in the years following his untimely death, leading some commentators to infer a concealed sexuality. ‘Contributing to his disappearance were his own reticence and a surprising sparseness of biographical information. Born into a prosperous bourgeois family in the provincial town of Nantes, he lived a clearly very different lifestyle in Paris, where he frequented unmistakably, if not exclusively, homosexual circles - he was, for example, an intimate of the dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou, who introduced him to Marcel Proust’, Roderick Conway Morris, ‘Forgotten Art of French illustrator George Barbier’, The New York Times, Nov. 14 2008.

Gautier’s Roman de la Momie was first published in 1857 and is a quintessential Orientalist fantasy, striking in recounting the discovery of a fully preserved female pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings by an English and a German Egypotologist. The mummy is identified as a queen, Tahoser, and a combination of hieroglyphics in the chamber and a papyrus scroll reveals her story.

The superb binding is by Cretté (1893-1969), ‘one of the Ecole Estienne’s most brilliant pupils... [who] after graduating joined Marius Michel’s studio, eventually taking over a month before the master’s death in 1925’ (Duncan and de Bartha, Art Nouveau and Art Deco Bookbinding. The French Masterpieces 1880-1940, 1989).

First edition, in a superb geometric binding by Henri Creuzevault. This is copy III of 5 copies on vieux japon (of a total edition of only 45 copies, the remainder on japon imperial), bound without the additional suite on chine. All the plates are signed in pencil. Sappho is one of Mariette Lydis’s rarest books, and among the most provocative, with its large format plates demonstrating her mastery of the etched line. Still under-appreciated and under-represented in institutional collections, Lydis is one of the most intriguing artistic figures of her era. Her youth in bourgeois Jewish Vienna was followed by travels across Europe, Africa and later England, the USA and South America. She settled in Paris in the 1920s (later describing the city as ‘the only place where it is possible to forget the brutality of men’) where she embraced the fluidity of culture and sexuality she found there. Though married three times (the last to publisher Giuseppe Govone, with whom she jointly published Sappho) she was openly bisexual. Her flight from Europe to Argentina in 1940 and subsequent isolation from European collectors and artistic movements perhaps served to obscure the astonishing range of her graphic art in the twenties and thirties.

The contemporary binding of this copy is an especially striking example of the art deco architectural style of Henri Creuzevault (1905-1971), among the most prominent and celebrated Parisian binders of the immediate pre-war era. Camille Creuzevault illustrates an almost identical binding on a copy of Pierre Louys’ Aphrodite of 1936 (Henri Creuzevault, II, 59). ‘Henri Creuzevault intended to be a painter but in 1918 he learned the craft of leather-gilding and then entered the binding studio of his father Louis Lazare Creuzevault. During his military service in the Middle East in 1925, he again took up painting and drawing. The following year, back in his father's studio, he drew his first sketches and exhibited his bindings at the Musée Galliera where he won first prize in 1928. Creuzevault’s art, always highly rigorous, developed throughout his life. His early style was fairly sober and traditional, progressing in the 1930s to compositions in the style of Art Deco, and 10 years later returning to an austere Classicism before the production of his bold works of the 1950s... ’ (Benezit).

Worldcat lists copies at Cornell, Harvard and Bibliothèque nationale only (there are also copies at Edinburgh University and the National Gallery of Scotland).

First edition with the Lydis illustrations, of Colette’s coming-of-age novel (first published in 1900-3 with debatable contribution from her then-husband, Willy). This is copy number 88 of 100 on pur fil Lafuma with plates in 2 states, after copies on Japon and Hollande, of a total edition of 1585 copies on different papers. There was mutual admiration (and perhaps more) between Colette and Lydis, the former having written an admiring note on the artist for the programme of the 1934 Bal des petits lits blancs, which Lydis had illustrated.

A rare physionotrace portrait of Henry Walter Livingston (June 12, 1768 – December 22, 1810) a United States Representative from the state of New York. He graduated from Yale College in 1786 where he studied law and was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in New York City. He was private secretary to Gouverneur Morris, American Minister Plenipotentiary to Paris, France, 1792-1794; judge of the court of common pleas of Columbia County, N.Y.; member of the State assembly in 1802 and again in 1810; elected as a Federalist to the Eighth and Ninth Congresses (March 4, 1803-March 3, 1807). He died at his home in Livingston, New York on December 22, 1810 and is interred with his wife in a vault there.

Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes). The process was introduced to America by Charles Saint-Mémin.

The miniaturist Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.

A rare physionotrace portrait of David Watson (1773–1830) was a lawyer, educated at William & Mary College (1796-1797) and (with Jefferson) a member of the first Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia in 1817. He and known to have been a confidant of Thomas Jefferson and other notable figures of the period. He was elected six times to the General Assembly and represented Louisa County at the 1829 Constitutional Convention.

Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes). The process was introduced to America by Charles Saint-Mémin.

The miniaturist Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.

A superb ‘game of goose’ on the theme of the peoples of the known world, with fine engraved corner vignettes representing Africa, America, Europe and Asia and 63 vignettes representing different peoples. They include native Americans (of California, Mexico, the Amazon, Iroquois, Brazil, Chile, Tierra del Fuego, Paraguay and Nootka Island), inhabitants of Java, Sumatra, China, Japan, Tahiti, Australia (Nouvelle Hollande) and New Zealand, as well as Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In common with other games of this type, the cultural attitudes represented by the symbolism and mode of play is worthy of decoding. With dice and counters, the players are to navigate (culturally, not geographically) from China (evidently still at the furthest reaches of the European geographical imagination) to France, via the 63 numbered squares, with their various characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Mexico (square 6) is shown as a bridge and players landing there jump straight to square 12 (the Amazon); at 19 (Tahiti) the islanders’ hospitality detains players for two turns; at 31 (Siberia) the players waits in exile until another player reaches the same square and rescues them, at square 42, traditionally the ‘puzzle’ square (Japan) the player is refused landing and goes back to 30 (Abyssinia) and just before the end, square 58 (New Zealand) the player encounters the reputed anthrophages (man-eaters) and returns to the start. Ciompi/Seville Collection 32; Adrian Seville, ‘The geographical Jeux de l'Oie of Europe. Les Jeux de l’Oie géographiques de l’Europe’, Belgeo, 3-4, 2008, 427-444 (56).

One of Heath’s famous graphic satires on the theme of The March of Intellect, which expressed contemporary anxiety over technological progress and social change in England brought about by science, education, industrialisation and commercialisation. This one shows a London street corner at the edge of open country and the sea, with numerous figures, including a street-sweeper, horse-drawn carriage, two men playing chess, musicians and singers and street-sellers, with wealthy figures being sent down a mechanical lift beside giant shop window stuffed with milliner. A steam carriage full of redcoat soldiers is seen in background, along with passenger balloons and a flying warship (raining canon-fire at ships below) in the air beside bridge crossing the English Channel between Dover and Calais.

[bound with:] [CORNÉ, J. J.]. Album du dessinateur en cheveux, [Paris, n.d., c. 1840s]. ff. 8 lithographed plates. Soiled, some old repairs to versos. One further additional lithograph design (smaller) bound in at end. Contemporary quarter roan (worn). Evidently well used, but still good copies.

Two exceptionally rare albums of designs by Parisian hair artists — not hairdressers but creators of popular memorial and funerary pictures created from the cut hair of the deceased of which numerous examples are depicted here. The Hanssen album has an additional price list (including prices for frames); the Corné album is without a title-page (it is unclear if it was issued thus). Both artists are mentioned by André Chanlot in Les Ouvrages en cheveux; leurs secrets, p. 36. Chanlot dates the Corné album to c. 1845 and records the death of Hanssen in 1846. Exceptionally Rare. Worlcat lists three copies of the Hanssen album (all in France) and none of the Corné.

First edition of this extensive pocket guide to London, England and Wales for a juvenile audience. The description of London is admirably complete, with notes on the principal monuments as well as its people and customs (‘The Lord of Merry Disports’ and ‘Itinerant Musicians’ among them). The plates (originally appearing London, or interesting Memorials published by Thomas Boys in London in 1823) depict The Custom House, Somerset House, Hanover Terrace and Westminster Abbey. Adams, London illustrated, 1604-1851 (1983), 150. No US copies in Worldcat and JISC/COPAC records the Bishopsgate Institute and Bodley copies only.

An attractive miscellaneous collection of painted arms, some perhaps dating from soon after 1800, some from the later nineteenth century and some from the twentieth. They provide an interesting overview of the arts of the heraldic miniature painter and calligrapher. Two good examples come direct from the College of Arms (both dated 1907), one of the larger pieces (315 × 255 mm) bears the arms of Thomas James Summers and is signed on the back ‘Painted by J. Eedes. 63 Great Titchfield St. Oxford St and a fine painting on vellum is marked in contemporary manuscript on the back ‘Painted by Peters & Sons Coachmakers London November 11 1858’. Some, including a couple bearing royal arms have evidently been cut from the original grants of arms.

A delightful, accomplished and idsiosyncratic illuminated manuscript in neo-gothic style by a French woman, one Sophie Mallet, probably as a wedding gift for a female friend or relation: Jeanne or ‘JMN’. The texts include familiar words of advice for a young wife, scriptural and otherwise, while a section titled ‘Vie du monde’ includes personal and original advice addressed to ‘ma Jeanne’. Among the texts are: ‘Qui trouvera une femme forte?...’ (Proverbs 31 [incorrectly given as Ecclesiasticus here], ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies’); ‘Bienheureux les pauvres d’esprit...’ (Matthew 5, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven); ‘Faites comme les petits enfants qui de l’une des mains se tiennent à leur père’ (St Francis of Assisi, ‘Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me’), and there are excerpts from the Imitation of Christ and from St Bernard.

The real pleasure of the manuscript lies in its illumination, expertly done with unusual and quirky details. The borders include numerous recognisable birds, insects and flowers rendered in impressive detail. Colours are applied very skilfully as are metallic highlights, including burnished and liquid gold, often on raised or otherwise textured grounds. Best of all is the colophon or tailpiece, which includes an entwined pair of longtailed dragons looking more like dinosaurs than medieval beasts.

The earliest portrait of Leopold Bloom? Mariette Lydis contributed one illustration to the first issue of “900”, placed with the fragment of Ulysses in the French translation by Auguste Morel. The image is clearly identifiable as a Leopold Bloom-like figure, yet is perhaps not a direct illustration (what are we to make of the Ostende tourist poster in the background?). It is dated 1925 in the lower corner and is captioned ‘Illustration’ at the foot. No earlier illustration of Bloom is known (nor indeed any earlier illustration of Ulysses) and the standard idea of him is drawn partly from Joyce’s own inept sketch of him made in Paris in 1926.

Joyce was nominally a joint editor of the radical literary review “900”, with Massimo Bontempelli. Mariette Lydis was Bontempelli’s lover at this period (her letters to him are preserved at the Getty Institute) and probably also know Joyce. She sketched his portrait the following year in Paris.

The Ulysses excerpt translated by Morel is episode 4, ‘Calypso’, introducing Leopold Bloom with his morning visit to the butcher’s shop for a kidney for Molly’s breakfast. James Joyce is listed among the journal’s editors on the half-title verso (along with Bontempelli, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Jerog Kaiser and Pierre Mac Orlan). Among the adverts at the end of the volume is a full-page for the forthcoming German edition of Ulysses by Rheinverlag of Zurich (the book appeared in the autumn of 1927). Another advert is for the journal Critica Fascista (a ’Fornightly Fascist Review’). Slocum & Cahoon, A Bibliography of James Joyce (953), D25 (p. 113).

King 202 (Albert Warren). Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003).

Not in King, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003).

First edition of this collection with the Lydis illustrations. Number 152 of 165 copies. Chant des Amazones is a celebration of female athleticism in verse, prose and image, Chant des Amazones is a celebration of female athleticism in verse, prose and image and is dedicated to ‘une jeune fille victorieuse dans la course des 1,000 mètres’. The texts are drawn from Montherlant’s Les Onze devant la porte dorée (1924) which he had written against the background of preparations for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Women’s participation in Olympic athletics was then extremely limited, but the decade after 1924 witnessed its rapid expansion and a general enthusiasm for women’s sport, reflected in this book. Well-known as a writer, Montherlant was an important contact for Lydis throughout her career though his posthumous reputation has revealed him as a serial pederast and dabbler in right-wing politics. His later works were marked by distinct anti-feminism and misogyny. Lydis’ illustrations are fresh and well-meaning, but her evident sexualisation of pubescent girls is troubling to the modern eye. The book was issued in handsome silver, green and turquoise lithographed wrappers.

First edition with the Lydis illustrations. One of a total edition of 131 copies, this one of the 115 on papier de Rives). The illustrations, many in the style of illuminated miniatures or icons are transformed through brilliant pochoir colouring executed in the workshop of master colourist Jean Saude, reproducing the artist’s signature on each.

These verse litanies, after the traditional catholic Marian litany, are entirely the creation of Armand Godoy and were first published (unillustrated) in 1930. Symbolist poet Godoy was born in Havana in 1880 and spent the first part of his life in Cuba and Peru, working in banking and the tobacco trade, before emigrating to France in 1919 with the express intention of becoming a poet ‘dans la langue de Baudelaire’. Much influenced by the Parnassians and the symbolists he was also a major collector of books, manuscripts and prints, amassing an unrivalled collection of Baudelaireiana. Among his numerous small-scale published works in French is his translation of Poe’s Raven — Le Corbeau d’Edgar Poe (Émile-Paul frères, 1929, with a frontispiece by Lydis. Worldcat lists copies at Princeton and Bridwell only outside continental Europe.

One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.

One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.

One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.

One of 125 copies only of this original print from Dix Eaux-fortes pour illustrer Les Fleurs du Mal, Paris, 1928.