illustrated

Criteria:
  • Keywords = illustrated
  • Étudiants et Lorettes. Almanach du Quartier Latin (5e année). by (PUBLISHER’S ADVERT). (PUBLISHER’S ADVERT). ~ Étudiants et Lorettes. Almanach du Quartier Latin (5e année). Paris: E. de Soye et compagnie, [1850 or 51].
    A rare publisher’s advert for a short-lived satirical almanac devoted to the comic lowlife of the Parisian Latin Quarter, with its famously hedonistic students and… (more)

    A rare publisher’s advert for a short-lived satirical almanac devoted to the comic lowlife of the Parisian Latin Quarter, with its famously hedonistic students and lorettes courtesans or sex workers). The lorette emerged both in reality and in the popular imagination during the July Monarchy (1830-48), named after the Right Bank church of Notre Dame de Lorette where they were thought to reside and the almanac promises a range of playful gender inverting fun based on the ‘Vésuviennes’ (popular heroines of the 1848 revolution who donned uniform and took to the barricades) including the confessions of a Vésuvienne and their ‘Charte-Constitution’.
    During the February Revolution of 1848, French women briefly hoped for political rights and an improvement in their social situation. Such hopes were short-lived and popular reaction was expressed in satires like this. The complex image of the Vésuvienne woman warrior, both pleasantly seductive and scandalously rebellious. She appeared in all the major newspapers, while real women in the streets claimed this title by parading under a Vesuvian banner. Their morality was often called into question and it is no surprise to see lorettes and Vésuviennes share a billing here. In Belhomme’s lithograph, three lorettes step out of basket (one thumbing her nose); a reflection of a popular contemporary song ‘Le Panier aux lorettes’.

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  • Les Fleurs du Mal. by LYDIS, Mariette, illustrator. Charles BAUDELAIRE. MAROT-RODDE (Louise MAROT), binder. LYDIS, Mariette, illustrator. Charles BAUDELAIRE. MAROT-RODDE (Louise MAROT), binder. ~ Les Fleurs du Mal. Paris: G. Govone, 1927 and 1935.
    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… (more)

    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.

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  • [Saint Francis with the Virgin and Infant Christ; Saint Anthony of Padua. by (DEVOTION. DRESSED PRINTS). (DEVOTION. DRESSED PRINTS). ~ [Saint Francis with the Virgin and Infant Christ; Saint Anthony of Padua. [France or Catholic Low Countries, eighteenth century]
    The fashion for dressing prints existed probably from the origin of printed illustrations themselves, though it was a widespread, predominantly female recreation during the seventeenth… (more)

    The fashion for dressing prints existed probably from the origin of printed illustrations themselves, though it was a widespread, predominantly female recreation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often with a devotional intent.

    The subjects here are Franciscan: Francis himself in a version of the legend of the appearance to him of the Virgin and Infant Christ, and Anthony of Padau in friar’s habit with an infant and a cherub. St Francis is the most elaborate of the two, with almost all of the cut print’s surface covered with colour, several silk brocade fabrics (brown, black, white and silver), gold paper highlights and glittering ground glass. Cherries on a tree above the group are rendered in tiny red wax spots, giving a round and shiny surface to each. The border is of black lacquer-like paint and gold paper, and an engraved Latin caption reads: ‘Quid parvum Francisce adeo miraris Iesu / Expecta pendens in cruce maior erit’. The surrounding parchment surface is illuminated with full borders of pink roses. Saint Anthony’s robe is rendered with a single piece of shiny brown silk, with narrow painted bands of the original print giving the impression of its folds. The grassy ground on which he kneels, and the tree above him shine with fragments of ground green glass.

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  • The Adoration of the Magi. by (ARUNDEL SOCIETY). [Christian SCHULTZ after Hans MEMLING]. (ARUNDEL SOCIETY). [Christian SCHULTZ after Hans MEMLING]. ~ The Adoration of the Magi. The Arundel Society. 1863.
    The Arundel Societies superb colour printed version of Hans Memling’s Jan Floreins Triptych, copied by Christian Schultz.
    The Society was founded in 1849 at a meeting… (more)

    The Arundel Societies superb colour printed version of Hans Memling’s Jan Floreins Triptych, copied by Christian Schultz.
    The Society was founded in 1849 at a meeting in the house of the painter Charles Eastlake, who became the first Director of The National Gallery, and was named after the Earl of Arundel, collector and patron - a man whom Horace Walpole described as the ‘father of Vertue in England’. The Society saw the progress of art in England as being dependent on popular taste. It was established with the aim to promote a greater knowledge of art through the publication of literary works and high quality reproductions of Italian fresco cycles, classical art and a handful of Northern European masterpieces. John Ruskin was an early member. Many modern British artists who did not travel, including the Pre-Raphaelites, and many collectors and an entire art-hungry class were only familiar with the Old Masters in colour through Arundel Society prints. The Society was discontinued in 1897, when it was overwhelmed by the use of photography.
    The prints did not rely on photography and were not made directly from the original paintings. Instead from 1852 skilled copyists were sent out across Europe (by Henry Layard of the Society) to make smaller, very accurate water- and body-colour copies directly from the originals, probably using Windsor and Newton ‘Moist Colours’ in zinc tubes, which had been available from 1846. Each colour used was given its own lithographic stone, and up to 20 stones were drawn upon by hand and printed from to build a composite colour image. Standardising the colours throughout the complex process produced rather saturated but faithful copies, entirely by hand, before colour photography. Perhaps the greatest copyist, Christian Schultz, was also a lithographer.
    Memling painted this triptych in 1479 for brother Jan Floreins of the Oud Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges, where it remains as part of the collection of the Memlingmuseum. He probably depicted himself to the left of the central panel, where he kneels behind a wall, holding an open book. The two panels on the verso of the wings, which are visible when closed, depict John the Baptist and Saint Veronica. The patron’s initials ‘IK’ are visible in the margins and these two panels include a trompe l’oeil lock which visually ‘fastens’ as the triptych is closed - reproduced faithfully in the Arundel copy. The Society made facsimiles of only two Flemish artists: Van Eyck (The Ghent Altarpiece) and Memling (The Lubeck altarpiece and the present Jan Floreins triptych). W. Noel Johnson, A Handbook (Catalogue raisonné) to the Collection of Chromo-lithographs from Copies of important Works of Ancient Masters, published by the Arundel Society: with historical and special artistic Record and Notes (1907) 182-6.

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  • Caractères des Passions gravés par Bernard Picart sur les desseins de Mr. le Brun. [for:] [Conférence... sur l’expression générale des passions]. by PICART, Bernard, engraver. Charle LE BRUN. PICART, Bernard, engraver. Charle LE BRUN. ~ Caractères des Passions gravés par Bernard Picart sur les desseins de Mr. le Brun. [for:] [Conférence... sur l’expression générale des passions]. Amsterdam: chez B. Picart le Rom. Sur le Cingel vis a vis le Marché aux pommes A. l’Etoile, [n.d. c. 1711].
    A complete set of the small plates for Le Brun’s influential artists’ manual, Conférence sur l’expression générale des passions (lectures at the French Académie royale… (more)

    A complete set of the small plates for Le Brun’s influential artists’ manual, Conférence sur l’expression générale des passions (lectures at the French Académie royale given between 1668 and 1678, but not printed until 1698). They are preserved in their original uncut state, four plates to an uncut sheet. Each sheet retains the stab holes for stitching in oblong format, probably the form in which they were issued by Picart, with the plates reorientated here when bound on guards in the nineteenth century. They were evidently sold separately, uncut as here, but were also issued dissected with the small format editions of the Conférence.

    Le Brun had lectured on the expression of emotions and produced a set of drawings to illustrate tranquility, admiration, desire, apprehension, joy, sadness, contempt and hatred, jealousy, and despair and fury. The lectures and the illustrations (’expressive heads’) were not published until 1698, when they appeared as Caractères des Passions which swiftly became one of the principal artists’ manual and was reprinted several times within a few decades, including in English. These Picart plates ‘correspond to [the first edition] with the addition of eleven new plates, except for fig. no. 34. Here, for the first time, the previously rather strange head-dress of this figure has been clearly represented as a metal helmet, thus making it easier to recognise in it Rhosaces, the man about to strike Alexander in the Battle of the Granicus’ (Montagu).

    This set bears the stamp and spine title of the Pictura Groningen (the stamp being Lugt 2028); a print collection now widely dispersed. Jennifer Montagu, The Expression of the Passions. The Origin and Influence of Chalres Le Brun’s Conférence sur lexpression générale et particulière (Yale, 1994) B.8.

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  • [ALBUM. by (?PARKER, Mary, Lady Leighton, compiler). (?PARKER, Mary, Lady Leighton, compiler). ~ [ALBUM. England, c. 1830s with some earlier inclusions].
    A large and full album containing accomplished watercolours and a selection of contemporary prints.
    The original drawings and watercolours here (together with the more significant… (more)

    A large and full album containing accomplished watercolours and a selection of contemporary prints.
    The original drawings and watercolours here (together with the more significant prints) display a distinctly romantic sensibility, with mountain and lakeland scenes (and more than a hint of the cult of the sublime) and other rural subjects of cottages and cottagers. Some of the views are obviously of Britain, while others are continental (specifically alpine). The majority are unsigned, though a number are by the same very accomplished amateur hand, with others by less schooled, perhaps juvenile hands. The whole assemblage is typical of the culture of early Victorian album- and scrapbook keeping, where a female compiler (often a mother) brought together contributions from family, friends and visitors, sometimes recording their travels, but including also subjects painted at home or copied or adapted from other sources. In the latter category are found a fine series of flower paintings, together with drawings in pencil and crayon of animals, a female reader, a cottager with a bundle of firewood, and so on. The principal artist, who contributes the largest and best watercolour views may well be identifiable as Mary Leighton, née Parker (1799-1864), a northern British artist whose work is represented in a sequence of albums closely comparable to ours at the Yale Center for British Art (MSS 16). Not only is the range of materials of our album similar in each case (including watercolour contributions from Leighton’s brother, John Parker) but the style of the best watercolours is close to those by Leighton (examples of here work are digitised by the YCBA, notably the watercolour of Lake Maggiore catalogued as B2009.9.68 in the Printed and Drawings collection, together with others in the V&A collection in London). A recent northern provenance for the album further supports that likelihood.
    The contents include:
    Six fine watercolours of rural scenes (one mountainous, another captioned ‘Cottage. From nature’), several other sepia watercolour views, probably by the same hand. All unsigned.
    Pencil drawing, Warwick Castle, signed ?C.W.W. May 29th, 1821.
    Twelve watercolours of flowers and fruit (including sweet peas, auricula, a rose, geranium, fuchsia and two mixed bouquets). Unsigned.
    Silhouette portrait (perhaps a self portrait) of the prolific society silhouettist Auguste Édouart (1789-1861), signed, 1831, mounted on an elaborate lithograph background, plus one other silhouette without background, possibly also his work.
    Two watercolour miniatures (85 × 115 mm) by John Parker (1798-1860) of mountain views in North Wales: Trevaen (Tryfan) and Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), signed, dated 1824 and with manuscript descriptions on versos.
    A circular miniature (diameter 85 mm) in sepia wash of a woodland grotto scene, mounted on a bifolium with manuscript caption in German dated 1818 signed Rösel, the miniature attributable to Johann Gottlob Samuel Rösel (1768-1843).
    Four large alpine engravings/lithographs (Montblanc, Hospice de Grimsel, Hospice du St Bernard, Chamounix), elaborately hand-coloured.
    Numerous usually smaller pencil or crayon drawings, including rural or cottage scenes, animals (a pig and a donkey), marine scenes, children at play, a girl reading etc. In several hands of different competence.
    Larger prints include: ‘The Late King’ (Hullmandel, after 1830); ‘Oaklands near Newnham, Gloucestershire’ (Haghe, ?c. 1830s); ‘Rev. Richard Raikes’ [founder of the Sunday School movement] (Hullmandel, n.d.); ‘The Thames Tunnel’ [Harding/Dixie, hand-coloured lithograph, c. 1835]; ‘L’Ingrat’ (Hullmandel, after 1832); ‘Kossynier : Sensenträger’ (Warsaw, c. 1830); ‘Ilfracombe, from Lantern Hill’ (Day & Haghe, c. 1830). There also several smaller lithographs including series of seaside views in Devon (Ilfracombe) and East Kent (Ramsgate and evirons, some locally printed.
    Four small continental devotional prints, two with moveable flaps, one metallic.
    (From the YCBA catalogue record): Mary Leighton, née Parker, 1799-1864 was the third child of Thomas Netherton Parker (1771-1848) and his wife, Sarah. Her parents must have encouraged their children's creative pursuits, as Mary and her elder brother John both became accomplished amateur artists. Their family was close friends of the Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Charlotte Barker (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1832), two upper-class Irish women who fled their families and established a home together in North Wales, at Plas Newydd, only fifteen miles from the Parker family estate, Sweeney Hall. Correspondence between Sarah Parker and Sarah Ponsonby, currently in the Denbighshire Record Office archives, reveals that Mary occasionally sent the ladies her drawings, many of which record the grounds of Plas Newydd and the surrounding countryside. The subjects of Mary's drawings also include prominent Grand Tour sites, satirical treatments of contemporary fashions, and thoughtful portraits of friends and family. Notably, the only portrait from life of the Ladies of Llangollen is by Mary's hand. Mary remained an active amateur artist following her 1832 marriage to Baldwin Leighton, 7th Baronet (1805-1871), of Loton Hall. Together they had six children, who Mary actively encouraged in drawing and painting. 

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  • Le Livre de Marco Polo gentilhomme venitien 1271-1295. by LYDIS, Mariette, illustrator. LYDIS, Mariette, illustrator. ~ Le Livre de Marco Polo gentilhomme venitien 1271-1295. [Paris: Taneur and Darantière for] Les Cent Une, 1932.
    Copy number 5 of 111 copies only printed for Les Cent Une, Société de femmes bibliophiles, with two original pencil drawings and a suite of… (more)

    Copy number 5 of 111 copies only printed for Les Cent Une, Société de femmes bibliophiles, with two original pencil drawings and a suite of proof plates. All copies were printed on paper watermarked ‘Les Cent Une’ and this is a tirage de tête copy printed for member, Celeste Pigasse. The text is after the 1556 French edition by André Jaulme (complete with authentic contractions) while the superb visual interpretations by Mariette Lydis include two of her characteristic decorated maps (both are signed). This is one of the early publications for the women’s book collecting club founded in Paris by the Princesse Schakhowskoy in 1926 as a direct riposte to ‘Les Cent’ — a bibliophile circle which then included no women among its members. Les Cent Une issued editions limited to the 101 members only and a handful of collaborators, usually no more than once a year, and the club is still in existence. Celeste Pigasse (née Crouzat) was a founder member and served as the club’s general secretary in its formative years (her husband founded the publishing house Librairie des Champs-Élysées ‘LCE’ whose Le Masque imprint published popular crime and detective fiction, including the French editions of Agatha Christie). Carteret IV, 322.

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  • L’Amour Badin ou les ruses de Cupidon dediès a la jeunesse. by (ALMANAC). (ALMANAC). ~ L’Amour Badin ou les ruses de Cupidon dediès a la jeunesse. Paris: [Jagot for] Boulanger, [1788].
    Sole edition of this entertaining almanac for 1789, aimed at young people (but presumably not children) with a delightful suite of humorous and mildly erotic… (more)

    Sole edition of this entertaining almanac for 1789, aimed at young people (but presumably not children) with a delightful suite of humorous and mildly erotic plates by François-Marie-Isidore Quéverdo. Each month is given an engraving, several verses and songs with music. Among the latter is found ‘Air de la negresse’ — a three-verse song with music from (or perhaps just inspired by) Radet’s 1787 opéra-comique La Negresse. Though recorded by both Gay and Carteret we have not located any institutional copy in the usual online catalogues (WorldCat, KVK, CCFr, JISC). Carteret 866; Gay I, 112.

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  • Picturesque Views of the Principal Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in England and Wales. By the most eminent British Artists. With a Description of each Seat. by HARRISON, publisher. HARRISON, publisher. ~ Picturesque Views of the Principal Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in England and Wales. By the most eminent British Artists. With a Description of each Seat. London: Harrison & Co. No 18, Paternoster Row, [1786-1788].
    First edition of this serially issued country house book with fine engraved plates by Birrell, Walker, Ellis, Fittler, Heath, among others, after E.F. Burney, Corbould,… (more)

    First edition of this serially issued country house book with fine engraved plates by Birrell, Walker, Ellis, Fittler, Heath, among others, after E.F. Burney, Corbould, Dayes, Robert Nixon and others. The engraved title includes a fine vignette of Harrison’s book and print shop in Paternoster Row. It was issued monthly, with four plates per issue at 3 shillings, and printed on ‘real Superfine French Colombier Paper’ (advert in London Gazette, 10-14 October, 1786).
    The houses illustrated and described range from the most opulent (including Blenheim palace) to more humble gentry houses. Included are Garrick’s Hampton House, Piozzi’s Thrale Place, William Pitt’s Holwood House, Lady Diana Beauclerk’s Twickenham Meadows, Charles Dashwood’s West Wycombe Park and Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. The engravings are valuable records of both architectural, landscape and garden details and were widely imitated, not least on contemporary ceramics, while the descriptions contain useful details of architects, garden designs, landscape features such as rivers and lakes, and fine art collections — they are not always entirely complimentary. Upcott p. xxxiv. For Harrison’s bookshop see Raven, ‘Location, Size and Succession: The Book shops of Paternoster Row before 1800’ in The London Book Trade, eds. Myers, Robin; Harris, Michael & Mandelbrote, Giles (London, 2003), pp 89-126.

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  • German Popular Stories. Translated from the Kinder und Haus Märchen collected by M.M. Grimm from oral tradition. by GRIMM, Jacob and Wilhelm. GRIMM, Jacob and Wilhelm. ~ German Popular Stories. Translated from the Kinder und Haus Märchen collected by M.M. Grimm from oral tradition. London: [Richard Taylor for] C. Baldwyn, 1823.
    First edition. The first volume of the first English edition of Grimm’s fairy tales. The copy belonged to G.M Robertson, artist and illustrator Graham Robertson’s… (more)

    First edition. The first volume of the first English edition of Grimm’s fairy tales. The copy belonged to G.M Robertson, artist and illustrator Graham Robertson’s father and loosely inserted is a letter from Kerrison Preston (dated Christmas 1970) to Gillian Preston where he notes, ‘This Grimm belonged to Graham Robertson’s father Graham Moore Robertson and must have influenced the child’s upbringing, and so it has some association value’.

    Indeed, Robertson wrote in his memoir, Time Was of his early and defining interest in fairy-tales: ‘I had reached the ripe age of thirteen and had for years been an earnest student of fairy-tales, ballads and romances. In the course of my studies I was continually coming across dazzlingly beautiful ladies, princesses lovely as the day, radiant fairies, exquisite though distressed heroines. There was never any doubt as to the beauty of these ladies; it took you flat aback at first sight and you knew at once that you were in the presence of a Fairy or a Princess or at least of an ill-used stepdaughter — which came to the same thing in the end … I looked round me in the solid, comfortable, mid Victorian world. There were pretty girls and girls who were not pretty; there really seemed very little difference between them. They roused no particular interest, and as to taking one flat aback — well, it was not in their line. I concluded, after some research, that the race of Fairy Princesses was extinct, and I didn’t much mind’. (p. 53).

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  • Diane de Bournazel. Livres uniques, peintures, dessins. by PASTOUREAU, Michel, Justin CROFT and Librairie MÉTAMORPHOSES. PASTOUREAU, Michel, Justin CROFT and Librairie MÉTAMORPHOSES. ~ Diane de Bournazel. Livres uniques, peintures, dessins. Paris: Librairie Métamorphoses, [2024].
    First edition, one of 600 copies only. Catalogue of this unique book artist’s exhibition in Paris, Spring/Summer 2024, with 33 items fully illustrated. Introduction by… (more)

    First edition, one of 600 copies only. Catalogue of this unique book artist’s exhibition in Paris, Spring/Summer 2024, with 33 items fully illustrated. Introduction by the French cultural and medieval historian Michel Pastoureau. Text in French, the English translation on a separately printed insert (8 pages). Ships from the UK, postage extra and charged at cost (this is a large book).

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  • Nuit pleine. by BOURNAZEL, Diane de. BOURNAZEL, Diane de. ~ Nuit pleine. [Marliac & Paris], 2023.
    Nuit pleine, while characteristic of De Bournazel’s astonishing unique books, also signals new directions. A profound black occupies many of the spaces between the teeming… (more)

    Nuit pleine, while characteristic of De Bournazel’s astonishing unique books, also signals new directions. A profound black occupies many of the spaces between the teeming figures inhabiting each page, and on close examination they emerge from this darkness through negative spaces. The pages mirror several of her recent panel paintings where figures are revealed from blackness in the same way. Nuit pleine seems to explore a more contemporary scene than many of her books and among the the hybrid figures we surely find protesters among the crowds with placards, flags and even a cellphone. Angular structures in the puzzle-like backgrounds suggest an urban rather than rural scene, and yet timeless figures of mermaids, jesters and death itself anchor the book in a cyclical timeless continuum.

    Diane de Bournazel (b. 1956) creates books as ‘poems without words’ in her unique pen, ink and gouache style, filling each page with mazes of vegetation, mysterious borders, structures and figures, opening windows within pages allowing us to see behind and beyond them, suggesting a series of alternative worlds and narratives. Drawing on the universals of the cosmos, the natural world, of childhood and human relationships each of her books invite careful ‘reading’ and multiple interpretations. Collectors have found the books to speak for themselves, and the artist writes of her work simply as:

    ‘Poésie sans paroles.
    Il s’agit bien de ça.
    Mettre en images le monde et l’arrière monde,
    Comme un poète mais sans mot dire’.

    De Bournazel has recently been the subject of an essay by French medievalist and cultural historian, Michel Pastoureau, entitled ‘Fenêtres sur le rêve’ (2024) written to introduce the artist’s first major Paris exhibition. Following a deep consideration of the artist’s visual world he concludes: ‘The reading of Diane de Bournazel’s work takes a deliberately plural path, as in a fairy tale or a dream. It is obviously this way that she wants to lead us. And herein lies the magic of her art, an art that is both bewitching and bewitched, absolutely original, impossible to photograph and still less describe or explain. Her creations appeal not only to our imagination but to all our senses at once. You have to look at them, listen to them, feel them, breathe them and, ultimately, savour them’.

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  • Fatrasie. by BOURNAZEL, Diane de. BOURNAZEL, Diane de. ~ Fatrasie. [Marliac & Paris], 2023.
    Fatrasie is a twenty-first century visual interpretation of a rare and highly distinctive medieval poetic form of satirical nonsense verse. In the Fatrasie form, early… (more)

    Fatrasie is a twenty-first century visual interpretation of a rare and highly distinctive medieval poetic form of satirical nonsense verse. In the Fatrasie form, early French rhymers subjugated meaning to the rhythm of repeated sounds and syllables and yet were able to hide piquant criticisms of prevailing power structures within their verses. It is a particularly apt title among Diane de Bournazel’s unique artist’s books, which frequently conceal their narratives and meanings within the artist’s dense iconography.

    Diane de Bournazel (b. 1956) creates books as ‘poems without words’ in her unique pen, ink and gouache style, filling each page with mazes of vegetation, mysterious borders, structures and figures, opening windows within pages allowing us to see behind and beyond them, suggesting a series of alternative worlds and narratives. Drawing on the universals of the cosmos, the natural world, of childhood and human relationships each of her books invite careful ‘reading’ and multiple interpretations. Collectors have found the books to speak for themselves, and the artist writes of her work simply as:

    ‘Poésie sans paroles.
    Il s’agit bien de ça.
    Mettre en images le monde et l’arrière monde,
    Comme un poète mais sans mot dire’.

    De Bournazel has recently been the subject of an essay by French medievalist and cultural historian, Michel Pastoureau, entitled ‘Fenêtres sur le rêve’ (2024) written to introduce the artist’s first major Paris exhibition. Following a deep consideration of the artist’s visual world he concludes: ‘The reading of Diane de Bournazel’s work takes a deliberately plural path, as in a fairy tale or a dream. It is obviously this way that she wants to lead us. And herein lies the magic of her art, an art that is both bewitching and bewitched, absolutely original, impossible to photograph and still less describe or explain. Her creations appeal not only to our imagination but to all our senses at once. You have to look at them, listen to them, feel them, breathe them and, ultimately, savour them’.

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  • A Dish of Apples. by RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator. Eden PHILPOTTS. RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator. Eden PHILPOTTS. ~ A Dish of Apples. London & New York: [The Westminster Press for] Hodder and Stoughton, 1921.
    First Rackham edition. Number 65 of 500 copies. Gettings, Arthur Rackham, p. 139; Hudson, Arthur Rackham, pp. 118-119. (more)

    First Rackham edition. Number 65 of 500 copies. Gettings, Arthur Rackham, p. 139; Hudson, Arthur Rackham, pp. 118-119.

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  • The Baby’s Day book from Ba to four years Old Binkie. by ROBERTSON, W. Graham. ROBERTSON, W. Graham. ~ The Baby’s Day book from Ba to four years Old Binkie. [c. 1908].
    A unique album written and illustrated by the artist and illustrator W. Graham Robertson for Marion (‘Binkie’), daughter of artist Arthur Melville who had died… (more)

    A unique album written and illustrated by the artist and illustrator W. Graham Robertson for Marion (‘Binkie’), daughter of artist Arthur Melville who had died in 1904. It is one of several (another is in the Ray collection in the Morgan Library, New York) devoted to the young girl who became Robertson’s muse in the years following Melville’s tragic death. It comprises ‘Six Songs of the Day’ and ‘Six Songs of the Dusk’, the typed poems accompanied by his illustrations, usually depicting himself ‘Ba’ and the infant Binkie, and bear titles such as ‘Glad Day’, ‘Sea Pinks’, ‘Sand Castles’, ‘The Nowhere Place’ and ‘The Lady Dream Come True’. The larger watercolours are on Robertson’s Rutland Gate stationery.

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  • Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh and other Pageants for a Baby Girl by W. Graham Robertson with Twelve Designs in Colour by the Author. by ROBERTSON, W. Graham. ROBERTSON, W. Graham. ~ Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh and other Pageants for a Baby Girl by W. Graham Robertson with Twelve Designs in Colour by the Author. London and New York: [William Clowes for] John Lane the Bodley Head, 1907.
    First edition. (more)

    First edition.

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  • De studio militari, libri quatuor. Iohan. de Bado Aureo, Tractatus de armis. Henrici Spelmanni Aspilogia. Edoardus Bissæus. E codicibus mss. primus publici juris fecit, notisque illustravit. by UPTON, Nicholas. UPTON, Nicholas. ~ De studio militari, libri quatuor. Iohan. de Bado Aureo, Tractatus de armis. Henrici Spelmanni Aspilogia. Edoardus Bissæus. E codicibus mss. primus publici juris fecit, notisque illustravit. London: Roger Norton, for John MartinJames Allestrye & Jacobi Allestrye sub signo Campanæ in Coemiterio D. Pauli, 1654.
    First edition. Nicolas Upton’s De Studio militari was first written in 1447 and circulated in manuscript. ‘It is a treatise, in four parts, on heraldry… (more)

    First edition. Nicolas Upton’s De Studio militari was first written in 1447 and circulated in manuscript. ‘It is a treatise, in four parts, on heraldry and the arts of war, drawing heavily on a tradition of heraldic and legal writing, but also reflecting contemporary concerns. The first book elaborates a view of nobility and knighthood that recognizes the importance of virtue, but which also attaches importance (as Bartolo da Sassoferrato had done) to princely authority in the granting of arms. Upton voices the topos of the decline of chivalry, as well as contemporary aristocratic concern that too many low-born men were acquiring arms in wartime. The second book discusses various types and laws of war (using Giovanni da Legnano's Tractatus de bello), a theme carried over into the fourth book with treatment of Henry V's campaign statutes. For the third book, on the colours of heraldry, Upton relies, though not slavishly, on the treatise of Johannes de Bado Aureo (possibly Bishop John Trevor of St Asaph's). The fourth draws also on French treatises and especially on encyclopaedias (such as Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum) for the meaning of heraldic signs (animals, birds, fish, flowers, and ordinaries); but the extended list, in 195 sections, also reflects a growing demand for (and disputes over) coats of arms’ (Oxford DNB).

    It is followed in this first printed edition by jurist Henry Spelman’s Aspilogia, a Latin treatise on coats of armour, which, although probably written before 1595 had not previously appeared in print. It opens with a fine portrait of Spelman by Faithorne.

    Magistri Johannis de Bado Aureo Tractatus de armis (Wing J744) and Henrici Spelmanni equitis Auati aspilogia (Wing S4919) each have separate dated title page, with imprint ‘typis R. Norton’, pagination and register.
    In Nicholaum Uptonum Notæ (caption title) has separate pagination but the register is continuous from Auati aspilogia. The illustrations are signed by W. Hollar and Ro. Vaughan. The two double page engraved plates by Lombart are on paper with clear and visible foolscap watermarks. Wing (CD-Rom, 1996), U124
    Wing (CD-Rom, 1996), J744
    Wing (CD-Rom, 1996), S4919

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  • Claudine à l’école; Claudine à Paris; Claudine en ménage; Claudine s’en va. by LYDIS, Mariette, illustrator. COLETTE (and WILLY). LYDIS, Mariette, illustrator. COLETTE (and WILLY). ~ Claudine à l’école; Claudine à Paris; Claudine en ménage; Claudine s’en va. Paris: Éditions de Cluny, [1939].
    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… (more)

    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.

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  • Jeu instructif des peuples et costumes des quatre parties du monde et des terres australes. by (GAME). (GAME). ~ Jeu instructif des peuples et costumes des quatre parties du monde et des terres australes. Paris: Basset, [n.d., 1815].
    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… (more)

    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).

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  • The March of Intellect. by [HEATH, William]. [HEATH, William]. ~ The March of Intellect. London: G. Humphrey, Jan. 23 1828.
    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… (more)

    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.

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