Jesus, that’s some good typesetting
From: Paul Bourget, Garcia Benito (ill.): Le Testament Nouvelle en prose, 1919.
5/21/2013 3 Comments
An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress
Though it didn’t get quite the play that the Declaration of Independence received, there was a quasi-official British response in the form of a 132pp pamphlet by Jonathan Lind published in 1776. It went through at least five editions in that first year and then was seemingly forgotten. It goes article by article and makes some extremely cogent points (alongside the funny, pompous ones) about slavery vs. all men created equal, as well as the stated vs. real reasons for the revolution in general. He also goes full on John McCain and puts words like facts, theory, and maxims in a-hole italics while heaping disdain on the principles embodies in the Declaration. Pretty bracing stuff. You could do a lot worse than teaching this along side the Declaration of Independence in elementary school. I’m going to tweet the high points if I can squeeze it into my busy day…
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
“Among reasons to justify a national revolt, to find it gravely alleged, that the members of an assembly happened, once upon a time, to be straitened in their apartments, and compelled to sit on strange seats, and to sleep in strange beds – is, I believe, unexampled in the history of mankind.”
5/17/2013 Leave a comment
Hell: Maybe Not That Great After All
Just in: A three volume work on art and design in Pisa (Pisa Illustrata Nelle Arti del Disegno, 2nd expanded ed., 1812) contains, along with various depictions of Pisa, two re-impressions of much earlier engravings. The two plates, both from the late 15th century, are by Baccio Baldini and depict St. Jerome (who I always think of as that guy that the Wife of Bath took down) and hell. The hell plate is Baldini’s version of the Camposanto fresco in Pisa. The frescos were damaged during World War II (the current state of the hell fresco is shown below). Amongst other horrors, The devil (or just a giant demon? Either way, a two fisted eater of humans) is shown eating people and then, possibly throwing them up out of his stomache/mouth. Or eating from two directions at once? It’s unclear, but what is interesting is that the Devil’s lower mouth has Simon Magus in it. Or, at least, a plaque with his name on it – the Simon Magus memorial nether mouth.
5/16/2013 Leave a comment
New Pazzo Graphics
The new Pazzo illustration by the great Rick Pinchera is done and looks terrific. You’re going to start seeing this all over – postcards, t-shirts, the sides of buses, pulled behind airplanes, in your dreams – so enjoy it now while it’s just a picture on your computer screen.
5/14/2013 Leave a comment
Reynard and What to Do With a Fox in Your Habit
In the lovely 1846 edition of Goethe’s Reynard the Fox (Reineke Fuchs, J. G. Cotta, Stuttgart and Tubingen; folio), illustrated by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, there is a plate showing Reynard running up a monk’s habit much to the consternation of a group of bystanders (the final plate, below). It was not especially quickly suppressed (as many copies, at least, seem to have it as not have it) and you can make up your mind about precisely how dirty it really is…
5/14/2013 1 Comment
New Arrivals: Illustrated, Science, Classics and Some Latin Hoochie Coochie
3/28/2013 Leave a comment
Where’s my damn sailcar?
From William Emerson’s 1754 work, Principles of Mechanics, and still not in my driveway.
One.
Plate Two.
Plate Three.
Plate four.
2/7/2013 Leave a comment
Distillation ca. 1792
Below are two plates picturing distillation equipment and an explanatory (or obfuscatory, depending on your French) section from Annales de Chimie, January 1792.
Figure 1
figure 2
extract from a letter from Johan Gadolin
Gadolin was a prominent Finnish chemist and discovered Yttrium which, allegedly, is an element that looks like this:
1/26/2013 Leave a comment
Chap Record: Behold herein, all nice and neat, a record of the men I meet.
Frederick Stokes, New York, undated.
A charming turn of the century book for recording ones impressions of chaps, the previous owner has filled out 13 pages, representing over 50 chaps. I suspect she transferred some chaps from a previous record, as the dates run from 1899 to 1906 and I don’t think this was published until around 1904ish. In any case, early on she is having the most luck on the Jersey Shore, though later on, Peggy’s house is the hot spot.
notable chaps
Only five of the twelve notable chaps spots have been filled (most hopeless, anyone?) including Robert Breck Steele (best name).
William Hayward comes out alright, but what of the mysterious Arno Bruhun who was last seen at Grand Central Station in February 1905?
James Dawson is very cute and Irish, but is he in love with Fritzie Mehl? Charlies Baeder, once deemed very cute, has been downgraded to nervey. I wouldn’t want to speculate as to what you’ve have to do to precipitate a tumble like that.
Conceited or something. Ha!
Harold Hesse, the one I love the best of all…but married (in pencil).
Completely charming and just a little heart breaking, all at once.
1/11/2013 3 Comments
New Arrivals: Fairy Tales, Poe, and Animated Flowers
A nice group new to the shop including a number of Rackhams, Dulac’s Sleeping Beauty, Grandville’s Les Fleurs Animées, a lovely illustrated edition of Baudelaire’s translation of Poe, a charming fine press edition of La Belle Au Bois Dormant, and a few other illustrated tid-bits. The Sleeping Beauty carries a warning that English language editions of French fairy tales may not be sold in French speaking countries. Naturally, this admonition is in French.
Happy holidays!
12/22/2012 Leave a comment
Recent Arrivals in Theater History, Witchcraft, Nuclear Physics Etc.
Including a manuscript David Garrick letter in an extra-illustrated set.
12/8/2012 Leave a comment
Torpedoes, Mines, Dirigibles: Scientific American, 1889
We just picked up a collection of Scientific Americans from 1889 – this group is mostly from the latter half of the year. A rather amazing assortment of torpedoes, mines, inventions, dirigibles, bridges, aqueducts, tunnels and warships are represented on the front pages – it wasn’t just Verne and Wells that were obsessed with this stuff…
12/7/2012 Leave a comment
Milo Winter’s Billy Popgun
I’ve had this around since forever, but I was newly charmed today…
11/8/2012 Leave a comment
Diderot and D’Alembert: The Encyclopédie
A few plates from the quarto edition in 39 volumes of a work that has been described as: “A monument in the history of European thought; the acme of the age of reason” (Printing and the Mind of Man) and “That shit is bananas” (various).
10/27/2012 Leave a comment
New Arrivals: The Guild of Women Binders, Kids Illustrated Books
A various group of recent arrivals including – Baum’s Queen Zixi, Kate Greenway illustrated Brett Harte, silhouettes, a 16th century book on gardening, and a pair of finely bound volumes by The Guild of Women Binders. An Arts and Crafts influenced bindery, The Guild bound books from 1898 to 1904 and produced some remarkable work, often far outside the staid traditions of English bookbinding.
10/5/2012 Leave a comment
Edith Sitwell, Yodeling Centaurs
Towards the unloved bottom of a pile of modern literature that I picked up at auction last week, I found a copy of Edith Sitwell’s Rustic Elegies (Knopf, 1927) in a nearly destroyed jacket.
I was going to slap $8 on it and put it on the shelf – times being what they are for the Sitwells – when out popped a funny promotional photo of Dame Edith in one of her get-ups.
Two copies of the same photo, actually, both from the prominent speaker’s agency W. Colston Leigh. Flipping through the book, I found a ticket for a talk with Sitwell and her younger brother Osbert from December 1948. She’d also signed the poem Centaurs and Centauresses (A Yodeling Song) which, I imagine, she read that evening.
Now, even after all this, the book might only pay for lunch, but this ticket to listen to two poet’s speak, cost, in today’s dollars, $23.
9/21/2012 Leave a comment
John White: Artist of the Lost Colony
John White travelled with Richard Grenville to North Carolina in 1585 and was later Sir Walter Raleigh’s governor of the “Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island when it was beset with volcanoes and plunged into the sea never to be seen again (ed. note: or something). His watercolors of the flora, fauna, and indigenous people’s are a remarkable record. These are from The American Drawings of John White, 1577-1590. With Drawings of European and Oriental Subjects: A Catalogue Raisonné and a Study of the Artist, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1964. It’s possible those Pictish folks were not in North Carolina, but I haven’t dipped into the text volume yet…
9/20/2012 Leave a comment