bindings

Number 87 of 145 copies on Arches (after 22 on Japon, total edition 167, plus 25 reserved copies) of this stylish art deco interpretation of the French courtly poem of the thirteenth century, with illustrations by Robert Bonfils (the last finished by hand). The text is parallel, with the original on the left and Bédier’s modern French version on the right.

The binding by Franz Ostermann, called ‘Franz’ (1839-1938) is a superb art deco counterpart to the text, taking as its cue the chevron borders of the text. The chevrons are delineated by broad bands with with applied gold leaf, over a ground of grey and black morocco panels. The central panel is reserved for lozenges of grey and gold paper and overlaid marbled paper. It is a striking masterpiece of the mature years of ‘Franz’, a binder who had participated in most of the major strands of decorative arts in France from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the art deco period. Fléty, Dictionnaire des relieurs français 138; Peyré, Histoire de la reliure de création, 189.

A most attractive Catholic primer for the communion, evidently bound as a gift with an unusual Berlin work embroidered panel. ‘Berlin wool work is embroidery with Berlin wools or any type of thread or beads on canvas by means of copying a coloured chart known as a Berlin pattern. Almost exclusively confined to the 19th century, Berlin wool derived its name from the wool that came from Merino sheep in Saxony. It was taken to Gotha to be spun and on to Berlin to be dyed... Prior to the introduction of Berlin patterns it was very rare to find any indication about the choice of colour or threads. Berlin patterns were always coloured by hand at first, until the emergence of industrial printing techniques’ (V&A). Though the style originated in Germany, Berlin work was enthusiastically practised by women all over Europe and in North America

First edition of this lighthearted account of the typical Parisian Sunday, with superb etched vignettes by Lepère depicting picnics, rambles, cycling, drinking, dining and boating, complete with an original sketch for the first vignette, initialled by the artist. Number 50 of 250 copies. While Lepère is best known for his work in the revival of the woodcut in France, his immense talent in other media, including etching is attested by his many book illustrations. This deluxe copy, bound by Lenoë, has an inlaid engraved stone plaquette, evidently the work of Lepère, and perhaps an experimental or trial plate - its smooth surface has been incised in the manner of a woodcut (suggesting a soft stone like soapstone or alabaster) and inked. It depicts a tavern or dining room scene with diners, drinkers and a breastfeeding mother in the foreground. Carteret IV, 294. ‘Dernière et très belle publication de cet éditeur, très cotée... maintenant que le livre est très coté, on peur dire que c’est une des meillures et des plus pittoresques de l’artiste, la plus importante avec des eaux-fortes’.

First edition, an excellent copy, of one of the earliest of Humphreys’ well known medieval revivalist publications, entirely printed in colour in imitation of illuminated manuscripts. Parables of our Lord was issued both in this elaborate stamped black calf binding and a heavier papier mâché binding. The latter often broke the gutta percha binding of the book, leaving the pages loose. In this calf copy all pages are secure.

The colophon reads: ‘In designing the ornaments to the sacred parables contained in this volume, the illuminator has sought to render them in each instance appropriate. The work of illumination was commenced on the first day of May the year of Our Lord MDCCCXLV and terminated on the tenth day of Febry. MDCCCXLVI. HNH.’ McLean, Victorian Publishers’ Book-bindings in Paper p. 13, 51; McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.) p. 99-103 and 210.

A large and splendid binding - of one of the notorious forgeries created by Théodore Hagué (1822-1891) one of a considerable number purporting to have been made for Henri II and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. Hagué (1822-1891) had worked in London for Zaehnsdorf but was living in France in the 1860s when he began creating pastiche bindings and then outright forgeries, offering them for sale first in 1862. It was not until 1875 when examples found their way to London via Bernard Quaritch, who had entered into correspondence with a certain M. Caulin who was offering choice renaissance books, many apparently formerly belonging to a lost collection of Henri II and Diane de Poitiers. Quaritch sold the books almost exclusively to the British collector John Blacker. ‘Needless to say, the ordeal ended well for no one involved: by 1888, John Blacker had spent approximately thirteen years and £36,000 (£3.4 million by modern reckoning) collecting forged bindings, Bernard Quaritch was forced to scramble to cover his losses and hopefully his involvement in the whole charade, and Hagué dropped dead suddenly in 1891. Blacker’s collection was sold at Sotheby’s for £1,907 16s 6d in 1897, which translates to a little over £205,000 in 2017. Henry Folger, who began his collecting in 1883 (when John Blacker was deeply invested in purchasing Caulin/Hague’s forged bindings), kept a copy of the 1897 catalog, which features multiple full-color images made with a combination of letterpress and chromolithography, rare (and expensive) for an auction catalog at the time’ (Elizabeth DeBold, Under Cover: forged Bindings on Display at the Folger, Folger Library Blog, July 19, 2018).

Blacker’s sale included no less than nineteen books purporting to have been made for Henri II and Diane de Poitiers. This one, being a folio, has an especially expansive ‘Grolerieresque’ strapwork designs in black, white and gilt, a scheme continued in colours on the fully decorated gilt and gauffred edges. The design incorporates variations of both their monograms and devices, including Diane’s crescent moon devices (evoking Diane the Huntress, goddess of the moon, and her reputed iridescent beauty) and the famously ambiguous entwined ‘H’ and ‘D’ (the latter actually a ‘C’ for Henri’s Queen, Catherine, but easily readable as ‘D’ for Diana). Sotheby’s, Catalogue of a remarkable Collection of Books in magnificent modern Bindings, formed by an Amateur (recently deceased) (11 Nov. 1897), lot 15. Mirjam Foot, ‘Double Agent: M. Caulin and M. Hagué,’ Book Collector, Special Edition for the 150th Anniversary of Bernard Quaritch (1997), pp. 136-150. Adams B102; Von Gültlingen, Mareschal 14.

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.

With a delightful contemporary heart-shaped ex libris belonging to a young girl (probably the bookplate of Marie Josephe Briot, later Bartoulot of Belfond, Franche-Comté), d. 1840) A rare Vesoul imprint of a popular prayer book first published in 1681 and reprinted widely into the nineteenth century. The printer Poirson is not listed in the Répertoire d’imprimeurs/libraires (which lists a single Vesoul printer, Jean-Claude Bogillot, 168.-1760) though the CCFr does list a handful of ephemeral Poirson imprints of the 1790s.

A charming book-form trinket box, a ‘blook’ of unknown manufacture, but with other examples known to have been marketed in London in the late nineteenth-century. The monogram reads ‘M.S.’ and the reference is probably to Mary Queen of Scots, given the all-over thistle pattern. Mary was executed in 1587 and so it is possible that these boxes were in some way marketed at the time of the three-hundredth anniversary.

A diminutive Geneva psalter in green vellum. The French text is Bèze and Marot’s rhymed version first published in 1562 in which the 150 psalms were set to 124 melodies. Worldcat locates the Geneva copy only of this edition.

A privately-published fairy tale by a young girl, of which we can find no copy in any public collection, nor any obvious trace of the work or its author elsewhere. The book is printed on a handsome glazed paper and incorporates three illustrations, presumably the work of the author. It was almost certainly her who also decorated the smooth calf binding with a whimsical design depicting an owl in a tree by moonlight. The printed dedication is to ‘ma chère petite Cousine Renée’, with this copy of what was presumably a very small edition inscribed to the author’s mother.

First edition in book form, printed for private circulation and exceptionally rare. This copy bound in contemporary blue morocco with a rare additional engraved autoportrait by the author (a plate known in a handful of copies and in no other copy of Point de Lendemain).
Point de Lendemain is one of the great erotic classics of French literature. One summer night, a married woman initiates an encounter with a young ingénu ― and so begins a sophisticated and nuanced story of mutual seduction. ‘In merely thirty or so pages, the erotic conte [tale] Point de lendemain … captures the libertine essence of the French eighteenth century. It is often read, with a fondness not far from nostalgia, as a vignette for a certain idea of libertinage. With Point de lendemain, Denon celebrates the subtle seductions and the intense voluptés of vicomtes and marquises, set in rococo landscapes à la Watteau or in lavish interiors worthy of Du Barry. Point de lendemain is as graceful as a painting by Fragonard …’ (Marine Ganofsky).
This 1812 text has been reprinted many times, usually with plates making explicit what is so subtly left implicit in the original. In its first incarnation the tale appeared in an issue of the Mélanges littéraires ou Journal des dames in 1777 — its authorship concealed under the initials ‘M.D.G.O.D.R.’ — but Denon later revised and republished anonymously in this definitive edition of 1812, the version in which it is known today. It was printed in very small numbers (perhaps just 25 copies) and privately distributed. Copies are highly prized, both in private and public collections and we find just 4 copies in public collections worldwide: the Bibliothèque nationale copy only is listed in the Catalogue collectif de France, while OCLC/Worldcat lists American copies at Yale and the University of California, Berkeley only. There is also a copy in the Bodleian Library. L’Enfer de la Bibliotheque 57; Brunet II, 599; Diesbach-Soultrait 40; Monglond IX, 1167 (the two copies listed, including that of the Reserve, do not contain a plate). Marine Ganofsky, Point de Lendemain (Literary Encyclopedia, University of Saint Andrews, online).

An eighteenth-century homemade binding of a portion of a popular literary and satirical miscellany, a reminder that not all reading was from perfect copies. The New Foundling Hospital for Wit appeared from 1768-7) and was a vehicle for John Wilkes and his radical bookseller John Almon, each issue audacious satirical engravings. This one includes, as a frontispiece, ‘A Citizen of the World searching for a Wise Prince’ in which blindfolded man walks an empty street carrying a lantern and wearing a long, furred civic gown. On a sign board overhead is a portrait of Augusta, Princess Dowager of Wales and a jackboot, the emblem of the Earl of Bute. Below is a quote from Shakespeare: ‘Who says ‘Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords (Romeo and Juliet).

Among the various verses we find Richard Berenger’s ‘On the Birth-Day of Shakespeare’ originally included in The World.

A group of reliures japonisantes on a series of Edinburgh-printed ‘Author’s Edition’ copies of these two American authors. This style of binding, with characteristic embossed gilt paper covers in Japanese style became a bibliophilic vogue in the 1880s, reflecting the tremendous enthusiasm for all things Japanese in contemporary Paris. It is most unusual to find them in this context, on a group of popular American titles:

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 1883. pp. xlviii, 212; 256, (without half-titles) [and] HOWELLS, William D. Their Wedding Journey and A Chance Acquaintance. 1882, pp. 320; 303, [1]; The Undiscovered Country, 1882, pp. 250; 4 pages of ads, 269, [1]; The Lady of Aroostook. 1882, pp. 204 191, [1]; The Rise of Silas Lapham. 1885, pp. 330; 320, [2]; A Forgone Conclusion. A Counterfeit Presentment and The Parlour Car. 1882, pp. 316; 228.

An unusual New Years’ gift from an unnamed compiler ‘for my dearly beloved Isabella Sophia Ochando de la Vanda. January one, 1830’; a manuscript compilation of patriotic verse and pious texts by hymnodist Edmeston, Shepherd, Southey (’The Victory’), Millman, Bowring, Burden, Emmerson, and Carlyle’s ‘Hymn before public worship translated from the Arabic’. Most of the texts are in English but a couple, by the Mechitarian cleric Nerses Clajense, are in Spanish and French respectively.

The two fine watercolours show HMS Victory in battle and a fallen arab horseman.

A Tours-printed miniature Imitatio Christi.

First edition, bound in red morocco with Napoleonic emblems by Rosa, who together with Bizouard, Bozerian, Tessier, Simier, Lefebvre and Doll, supplied bindings for the Imperial household.

Written under the encouragement of the First Consul this is an important work in defining the purpose of modern diplomacy. Flassan was (like Napoleon) a product of the École militaire de Paris and served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before becoming professor of history at the military school at Saint Germain-en-Laye For Rosa: Ramsden, French Bookbinders, p. 178.

A commemorative volume (‘Not for Publication’) issued to accompany the Nepalese Prime Minister’s visit to HMS Dreadnought on exercise in the English Channel. The superb photographs depict: the Dreadnought, a submarine (4 plates), a torpedo boat destroyer (2 plates). The Nepalese deputation witnessed a demonstration of firing and of the deflection of torpedoes with safety nets. Launched in 1906, Dreadnought was a revolutionary battleship which stimulated the Anglo-German arms race and gave its name to an entire class of heavily armoured craft. It was widely publicised as part of British naval propaganda and shown-off to numerous foreign visitors. The Nepalese Prime Minister was the Maharaja Sri Teen Chandra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana (1863–1929), one of three nephews who had ordered the assassination of their uncle Maharaja Ranodip Singh Kunwar in the Nepali coup of 1885. Worldcat lists the Texas A&M copy only, and there is another in the Imperial War Museum.

An almanac for the year 1820. Engraved throughout with text and images. A delightful miniature almanac, which is preceded by several popular songs (‘Aux Dames’, ‘le Portraits’, ‘le Banquet’, ‘la Barque à Caron’ etc.) Though without imprint, this is characteristic of the popular miniature books produced by Marcilly. Not in Worldcat (which locates only an 1821 issue, described as in ‘128mo’). It is probable that it was issued in these two years only. Grand-Carteret 1908 (citing a copy in the collection of Georges Salomons).

A delightful edition in ‘petit format’ by Valade, who pioneered the format before it was made ubiquitous by his successor Cazin. The Londres and Liège imprints, of course, are false (Le petit format, Paris, 1878). The Contes moraux had first appeared individually in the Mercure, with a collected edition of 1761. The plates in our Valade edition are well-executed reductions of the Gravelot plates found in the first illustrated edition of 1763. Gay I, 709-10.