bindings

A superb copy of first editions of both Mariette Lydis’s suites of illustrations for Les Fleurs du Mal. The 1928 set as copy B (one of 15 on vieux japon) of a total edition of 353 copies, with an original watercolour and 10 etched and coloured plates (in three states, including artist’s proofs often coloured in wash or crayon, signed/annotated in pencil) plus the 1935 set with 33 handcoloured lithographs issued in 11 cahiers. The 1935 plates and watercolour are bound with the text and the 1928 plates are bound after. The 1928 sequence, exhibited at the Salon d’Automne that year is probably one of Mariette Lydis’s best works, while the more extensive 1935 sequences illustrates her evolving style and was exhibited by Lydis in New York.
Govone issued his large-format Baudelaire in 1928, together with just 125 copies of the accompanying suite of etched plates by Lydis. It was the first joint production of this important partnership. Though both partners were resolutely bisexual, Lydis married Count Giuseppe Govone (her third husband) in 1934. The two remained married until his death in Milan in 1948 despite Mariette Lydis flight to Buenos Aires before the Second World War. In 1935 Lydis prepared a new suite of plates.
Both suites are bound here, preserving wrappers in a superb contemporary binding by one of the most celebrated binders of the Art Deco era, Louise Marot, who together with her daughter Suzanne Rodde created a series of bindings of exceptional refinement in the 1930s, before Louise’s untimely death in 1938 and the closure of the Marot-Rodde workshop. Their design for Les Fleurs du Mal is an exquisite and technically astonishing floral motif (evoking both the poppy and the rose) to both covers of this large volume. It is especially interesting as an early example of the ‘irradiante’ style, with sinuous lines creating the illusion of both movement and an undulating surface, usually associated with the binder Paul Bonet in subsequent decades. Bonet was experimenting with the earliest of these radiant designs at precisely the time Marot-Rodde created this one (ie. between 1935 and 1938). One has to wonder which way the influence flowed. Discussing the works of women binders in Paris in the 1920s and 30s, Duncan and De Barta comment: ‘Many of the works of these women have an exquisite delicacy and flow absent from the more formal compositions of their male counterparts. Examination of Marot-Rodde’s abstract floral designs, for example, reveals a preciosity and sensuality that male binders did not achieve.’ Duncan & De Barta, Art Nouveau and Art Deco Bookbinding (1989), pp. 20 and 194; Tidcombe, Women Bookbinders 1880-1920 (1996), p. 189.

Cf. King 151 (1853 edition, but the same binding stamps, by John Leighton).

An attractive diminutive edition of a favourite garden book.

First edition. Number 43 of an edition of 50 copies. The poet Gordon Bottomley, an invalid since his childhood, lived away from the stress of cities in Carnforth, Lancashire. He donated his extensive collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings to the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle. ‘Gordon Bottomley has never enjoyed robust health … He can only work very very slowly and must husband his physical strength with the utmost care. … his work, appearing at rare intervals, is of great perfection. … He stands among the greatest’ (Old Vic Magazine, November 1922). Graham Robertson, who described Bottomley as a ‘dear friend’ wrote of the plays: ‘They have real stuff in them I think, especially King Lear’s Wife and his new one Gruach, just published, being an incident in the early life of Lady Macbeth; (Letters, p. 76). ‘Bottomley, who had a luxuriant beard and hair well into later life, was liked and admired. He maintained the standards and culture which he knew historically and aesthetically with a generous courtesy. He believed in rural tradition, community, and craftsmanship. His influence on the minority who are sensitive to the power of poetry, and especially of poetry heard communally, was due to his gift of friendship and direct encouragement as well as his writings’ (Oxford DNB). 

A superbly executed manuscript miscellany of short works by the eccentric antiquary and bibliophile Laurent de Crozet (1809-1872). The volume was edited posthumously by his son Amédée de Crozet (1847-1896) and is in the hand of a master scribe, Alphonse Pelletier of Marseille. The choice of contrasting quires of coloured papers aptly reflects some of the author’s curious bibliophilic practices. A prolific author of pamphlets and articles, it was said that he preferred to have each work printed in small editions by different printers, sometimes even ordering different gatherings from different printers. His aim was to make collecting his works as challenging as possible, so that only he and one other ever achieved a complete collection. Notably modest, de Crozet also published anonymously and adopted pseudonyms (such as the ‘Chevalier Apicius à Vindemiis’), a characteristic alluded to in the the author’s portrait (’Auctoris vera effigies’ which mentions a limitation of 50 copies) depicting a man sitting on an immense barrel, his pockets stuffed with pipes and bottles and his head in a book, so that his face is entirely obscured). De Crozet was a major collector of earlier French books (Perrier, Bibliophiles et les collectionneurs provencaux, 1897).

The contents comprise: Volume I: Du Coeur de l’homme selon la Philosophie ancienne; Reflexions; Notes de voyage (Hôtels, Registres des Etrangers; Enseignes; Voyageurs en Suisse, L’Amateur); Sur Cicéron; Lucrèce Borgia; Les Fiancés par Manzoni; Messe en Fa de Chérubin; Cicéron et Lord Byron; De la Décentralisation littéraire; Pensées; Histoire de l’Angleterre par Hume; Considérations sure les premiers siècle de notre histoire; Sur la foi. Volume II: De la Recherche des plaisirs’ De la Connaissance de Dieu; De l’Esclavage en Turquie; Memoires d’un Président de Conférences; Réponse de Mr. Casimir Bousquet; Notes sur Haitze’ Rapport; Notes bibliographiqes.

First edition. The verso of the front free endpaper has an early manuscript note: ‘Taken out of the Empress Josephine’s Library at Malmaison, when the Allied armies entered Paris in 1815’. The half-title bears another early inscription in pencil: ‘Dear Edward, you will find me at No. 2 Rue Trudon near Rue Camartin, if you arrive early come and see me, if I am not on duty, I shall call here about three o’clock. Yours Wyndham’.

Whether the book was ever in the library at Malmaison is debateable: the arms are of Louis Jean-Pierre, marquis de Fontanes (1757-1821) as a comte senateur de l’empire. Man of letters Fontanes had fled France at the Revolution (as a supporter of a reformed monarchy) and was associated with Chateaubriand. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Napoleon, who commissioned him to write an éloge on George Washington in 1800. He became professeur de belles-lettres at the Collège des Quatre-Nations, and a member of the Institut de France. Thereafter he gathered honours and became a major part of the Imperial educational reforms. He was named comte de l’Empire in 1808. After Napoleon’s fall he resumed his Royalist stance and was names Louis XVIII’s ministre de l’instruction publique. He is buried in Père Lachaise.

KingVictorian Decorated Trade Bindings 36 ( variant of this binding by Robert Dudley).

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 735 (Albert Warren, King’s example in blue).

Not in King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings.

Not in King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings.

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 361 (Red, John Leighton).

King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 361 (John Leighton).

Not in King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings

Cf. King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 733 (Albert Warren, probably the same binding, but edition of Menzies, Edinburgh, 1858). Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003).

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

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

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).

King 746 (by Albert Warren). Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003).