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First edition of Mandiargues’ third collection, mainly comprising prose poems, illustrated with seven surrealist designs by Bona. Number 102 of 600 copies, signed and initialled in pencil by Mandiargues.
‘Sensations are the point of departure in [Mandiarges’] journey to a land of fantastic metamorphoses which, toute reflexion faite, convey an impression of permanence and truth. A former disciple of Breton,
Mandiargues circumvents the traditional domains of Surrealism in order to enter the confines of an innocent universe that is revealed by pure sensation. “Donner legende aux faits de neige et de pluie” -
this is the first step in his venture.’ (Mark Temmer, ‘André Pieyre de Mandiargues’, Yale French Studies, 1964, No. 31, Surrealism (1964), pp. 99-104)

Mandiargues eroto-surrealist poem ‘Dalila Exaltée’ paired with Bona’s extraordinary etched plate, in the first volume of this important series whose aim was to create a dialogue between contemporary poetry and modern printmaking.
Published under the direction of Odette Lazar-Vernet, the Paroles Peintes series was dedicated to the presentation of otherwise unpublished poetry and original etchings by an international roster of modernist artists. It ran to five volumes between 1962 and 1975. This is the first volume and presents the work of Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues alongside the work of Chagall, Ernst and Braque, among others.
This copy is number 193 copies of 200 copies (there were also 58 hors commerce copies). The texts are 14 poems by Aragon, Arp, Albert-Birot, Follain, Guillevic, Joyeux, Laude, Lescure, Liberati, Mandiargues, Paulhan, De Solier, Tapié and Tardieu paired with 14 plates by Chagall, Magnelli, Zadkine, Gilioli, Ubac, Bissière, Jacobsen, Fiorini, Ernst, Braque, Dufour, Lepatre and Vieillard.

The exhibition comprised twenty of the fabric collages Bona is now best known for, all illustrated in colour here. Introductory essay.

A rare surrealist broadside, subscribed by André Breton, Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues among 29 others, against and exhibition and conference held at the Galerie Kléber by the right wing abstract artists Georges Mathieu and Simon Hantaï. The event, known as Les Ceremonies commemorated the Catholic Inquisition’s 1277 condemnation for heresy of the teachings of the Aristotelian scholar Siger de Brabant at the University of Paris, whereby the church attempted to halt the revival of classical thought in the Middle Ages. The Surrealists, shocked by the religious and deliberately reactionary nature of this event, responded with this broadside Coup de Semonce (’Warning Shot’) illustrated by Bona.

First edition (after the few grand papiers copies issued simultaneously) of Bona’s surrealist were/she-wolf novella, inscribed: ‘à Jacqueline Piatier en sincère hommage Bona de Mandiargues’ (Piatier was a critic for Le Monde and founder of its supplement Le Monde des livres in 1967). The cover reproduces a detail from Michael’s Maier’s alchemical emblem book Atalanta Maier (1617).

First edition, number 144 of 200 copies. Excerpts from the French philosopher Jean Grenier’s forthcoming autobiography (Gallimard, 1957) published for the ‘Chemin des Sources’ series by the Librairie Franco-Egyptienne in Cairo. It includes two small vignettes by Bona de Mandiargues (née Tibertelli), one a flying bird, the other a surrealist crouching fish-woman. Grenier is perhaps best remembered as mentor to the young Albert Camus at the Grand Lycée of Algiers. At the time of publication Bona was married to poet Pierre de Mandiargues, and was integrated into the surrealist circle around André Breton. Rare: Worldcat lists the Bn and Bibliothèque Jerôme Doucet copies in France, the Harvard copy in the US and another at the American University, Cairo.

Number 24 of 35 copies with the plates by Bona (of which the first five copies were on Van Gelder paper, the remainder on pur fil Marais, as here). Signed by Bona in pencil. The collection (the poet’s first) was first published (unillustrated) in Mexico in 1942. The Paris edition contains parallel text in Spanish and French (the latter translated by Jean-Clarence Lambert).

Bona creates a brooding surrealist counterpart the poetry of Paz. The diplomat-poet was closely associated with the Surrealists in Paris in the immediate post-war years and conducted a long and convoluted affair with Bona (with the full knowledge of her husband Pierre de Mandiargues).

First edition, number 22 of 50 special copies with a rare signed etching by Bona. Partly autobiographical this is one of the most illuminating retrospective accounts of Bona’s life and art, presented as an alphabetical gazeteer of influences, themes and ideas (amitié, dessin, De Pisis, echo. jeux,paradoxes, poèmes, solitude, tisssus, etc).

A placard in the form of a full-sized bread board, reproducing a collage by Bona, a gallery text to the verso in Italian. The exhibition Corruption domestique was held at the Galleria Cortina in Milan in March 1972.

First edition, inscribed by both author and artist, with a drawing by the latter, of this comprehensive illustrated account of Bona’s artistic career. It describes her earliest inspiration in Italy (notably Giotto, De Chirico and her uncle, Filippo de Pisis), her surrealist influenced canvases of postwar Paris and the fabric collages for which she has become best known for. Mandiargues engages with the artist’s iconography, notably the motif of the snail which became a touchstone after Bona’s pregnancy for the rest of her career.

First edition, number 68 of 80 copies signed and numbered by Bona, with all four lithographs also signed. Four poems by de Mandiargues, his final works, completed just before his death, on the cities of Rome, Berlin, Siena and Paris.

Afia Rezk, a Syrian textile artist now living and working in Paris, creates large scale textile installations using traditional weaving techniques. Here she has combined woven textile with monotypes printed from textiles to create a haunting artist’s book meditating on her own personal narratives woven into text/ile. Afia Rezk was born in 1980. She arrived in France with her family in May 2018. From childhood, influenced by Syrian crafts, she has used organic elements, living materials in constant mutation under the effect of oxidation, reduction and biodegradation. Her plastic research combines painting, collage, print, ceramics, weaving and installation. She studied Arabic literature at Damascus University before turning to the visual arts; she worked extensively in Syria before fleeing the war, leading workshops in both art and theatre as interactive practices to help families in emergency situations, as well as children and female victims of war. She has exhibited in Syria, Lebanon, France, Sweden, Swi and Germany and is a member the Agency of Artists in Exile in France.

‘In the garden of our house in southern Syria, the olive trees were imbued with love and blessings. This small patch of land was the site of my daily rituals. Every morning, after my walk, I eagerly returned to slip behind the house into the shade of the olive trees. I would take off my shoes before entering, as if I were stepping into a sacred place. Under the trees, I breathed in serenity, as if the earth itself pulsed to my own rhythms. Often, my mother would join me with her maté, and together we would share precious moments and stories etched in my heart and memory.
Last July, approximately 36 villages were burned in my native region of Suwayda by armed groups affiliated with what is known as the ‘interim government’. Most of these houses had land planted with olive trees.
Burning an olive tree is like burning a memory, rituals, seasons, stories, and roots.
This work is an attempt to keep alive the trace of what remains. Les murmures de l’olivier’.

The largest and most elaborate of Diane de Bournazel’s recent books, Rondes de nuit explores the possibilities and mysteries of the night, both from the human perspective of sleep, rest and dreaming, as well as the unseen life of the natural world in darkness and the infinite expanses of the night sky. At the centre of every page is a circular void, corresponding with depictions of the full moon at either end of the book, which can be seen in every opening. Each circular hole is illuminated to form a rebus or mandala, sometimes reminiscent of the visionary medieval manuscripts of the contemplative mystic, Hildegard of Bingen (notably Scivias and Liber divinorum operum). Elsewhere, figures float in space (one can be rocked back-and-forth as a moveable part) or participate in an eternal dance of life (and death). Lest we should see this as an evocation of the books of a distant past, a tiny floating space station against the night sky reminds of the artist’s contemporaneity.

The title, Contre jours, is enigmatic, firstly suggesting ‘backlighting’ (a literal translation of contre jour) in optical terms but also, more playfully, a sense of days against days, or of other oppositions such as dark and light. This particular book teems with human life, perhaps more than any other recent De Bournazel creation — from the figures and faces crowding the margins, sometimes only half seen, the silhouettes of figures against the sun, to the masses of tiny figures in squares and rectangles and crowded into miniature tower blocks. The cover bears an inlaid miniature, with two faces or masks drawn on the reverse of a convex glass disc.

First and only edition of this elegant little volume, a collection of witty verses and songs dedicated by the obviously cultivated members of the Normandy Société du Havre to their wives and daughters, sometimes on the occasion of a marriage or some other event. The sole copy located is in the Le Havre municipal library.

By an otherwise unidentified female artist, this is a rare large-format album of lithographs of the famous catholic Bavarian passion play at Oberammergau. The artist’s name is given only as initials ‘M. C. S. D’ on the plates and wrapper, but this copy bears a contemporary manuscript addition to the initials, which thus reads ‘M. C. S. Dawkins done by Herself’. It is additionally inscribed ‘with love’ to Major M. G. Best.

Performed decennially since 1634, the Oberammergau plays told the story of Christ’s passion, with a large cast drawn from local villages forming immense tableaux vivants with spoken biblical texts in the vernacular. In the nineteenth century it became a major attraction for well-to-do Grand Tourists and drew significant numbers of English visitors (so much so that the pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook established an Oberammergau office in 1880). The passion play was widely reported in contemporary English-language journals, adding to its attraction among English visitors (mainly protestant) who were curious about this ancient catholic theatrical tradition. We have been unable to discover anything substantial about the artist, but its fair to assume she made the journey to Oberammergau herself. WorldCat lists the V&A copy only in the UK. In the US there are copies at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake (IL) and WRHS (OH).

First edition of this souvenir account of a balloon ascent and parachute descent made by the pioneering French aeronaut, Élisa Garnerin, in Italy. An early pioneer of parachuting, Élisa had already made numerous drops in Paris and further afield in France, her performances often attracting enormous crowds. More than any other contemporary woman, it might be said without undue irony that her career was one of ups and downs — her celebrity as a balloonist and parachutist met with considerable opposition from the police, who found the crowds she drew to be troublesome, and her business probity was frequently questioned by her associates.

The illustrations in this pamphlet include a version of her circular portrait by Bouchardy made in Paris using the physionotrace apparatus invented by Gille-Louis Chrétien designed to copy physical features and simultaneously reduce them to an engraved plate. The folding plate shows Élisa borne aloft in an elegant gondola beneath her balloon, and then the gondola released from the balloon for her parachute descent.

A collection of billets de mariage — small letterpress printed announcement cards sent out to friends and neighbours, as was customary in this period. Where a place is specified most here come from Mechelen/Malines, Antwerp or Brussels and some bear early annotation in what appears to be the same hand, adding dates and ages, suggesting they were collected at the time.

Ten have printed or manuscript dates, the others are typographically similar and probably date from the same period. The billets could be issued in the name of the parents, or by both the bride or groom. In one case, there is an example of a billet printed in 1807 for each of the latter: ‘Mlle. Marie-Anne-Thêrèse Scheppers a l’honneur d’annoncer son mariage avec Mr. Louis-Jean Merghelynck, Lieutenant de la Gendarmerie Impériale’, with its counterpart: ‘Mr Louis-Jean Merghelynck, Lieutenant de la Gendarmerie Impériale, a l’honneur d’annoncer son mariage avec Mademoiselle Marie-Anne-Thérèse Scheppers’ (the two cards with variant borders).

The earliest dated card reads: ‘Madame la douairière De Petit née Du Jardin, a l’honneur d’annoncer le mariage de sa fille cadette avec Monsieur de Torri, capitaine au corps-franc d’Odonell, au service de S. M. Impériale & Royale &c. &c. De l’imprimerie de P.J. Hanicq, à Malines, 1794 [the date of 17 February added in contemporary manuscript]’.

Another reveals an unexpected and intriguing conjugal story: ‘Monsieur Adolphe d’Aoust a l’honneur de faire pars de son mariage avec Madame de Trazegnie, ci-devant Chanoinesse de Mons’. Genealogical records confirm that monsieur d’Aoust (who was also a Marquis) did indeed marry the former canonness of Mons, Marie Josèphe Robertine Hyacinthe Albertine de Trazegnies, in May 1813.

A Caen-printed bibliothèque bleue edition of a title popular in the genre, with other editions from Paris, Tours and Lyons. The woodcut portrait was evidently old when the edition was printed, the impression showing a scatter of wormholes affecting La Belle Hélaine’s face, hair and shoulders. The text has it origins in a Middle French chanson de geste of the fourteenth century. cf. Hélot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie (1928), 114 noting the degradation of the woodcut over its several issues, and this one specifically where: ‘la pauvre belle devient effrayante, avec un véritable trou à la place de l’oeil gauche’.

Two popular literary fairy tales. L’Oranger et l’abeille appeared first in Madame d’Aulnoy’s Contes des fées (1697) while La Reine de l'Ile des fleurs is taken from Les Illustres fées (1698), sometimes attributed to Madame d’Aulnoy and sometimes to the Chevalier de Mailly. Hélot, 177. Issued as part of Chalopin’s Contes des fées series.