Search

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).

Not in King, 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).

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

King 703, 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, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003) 549 (William Ralston).

King, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003) 472 (John Leighton).

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

Not in King Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003) (a surprising omission for one of the most striking designs of the period).

King, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003) 486

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.

First edition. One of 300 copies. Charles Martin (1884-1934) created this account of the Western Front in blank verse and graphic illustration, disguising its anti-militaristic sentiment under the title Sous les Pots de Fleurs, evidently to tease the censors who may or may not have seen the play on words (Sous le Flots de Peur, ‘Under waves of fear’). Martin’s art deco style was already well developed in his colourful pre-war contributions to the Gazette de Bon Ton, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, but here, working under frightening conditions, his tone is understandably darker. Like several other artists, he served as a camouflage officer, a serjeant in the ‘section de camouflage’, stationed at Bergues. Carteret, Modernes, V, p. 133.

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.

First edition of the first of Joseph Cundall’s illuminated gift books, with superb decoration by John Brandard printed in chromolithography. ‘The borders in the book were copied from Harleian MS 2936 and MS 3469, Royal MS.19.C.3 and 19.C.8, the DeCroy MS, and Henry VIII’s Missal, all in the British Library; also used was a Book of Hours in the possession of the publisher. The miniature paintings are from Harleian MS. 2877’ (Claire McKendrick). Cundall (printer, publisher and photographer) is also known as the publisher of the first commercially printed Christmas card (in an edition of 1000 copies) in December 1843 (the same month as Dickens’s A Christmas Carol). He later produced some of the most handsome illustrated books of the 1850s and 1860s, including the ‘Home Treasury’ series of children’s books. McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.) pp. 90-1.

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.