1776. I am offering a small hand-drawn and hand-colored map of part of Germany near Denmark, the title reading "Landkarte von Eyderstede Everschop und Utholm." The peninsula covered by the map, largely flat marshland, was being diked by the year 1,000 a.d., a cooperative gesture between settlements surely uncommon for the time. The map shows green landscape, heraldic Eyderstede ships, inked names and buildings, map projection numbers, a mileage chart, and the illegible signature of T.C. ****, who drew it in 1776. The map, in its borders, measures 14.5cm x 19,7 cm, and has an old center crease. The reverse bears a few brown stains and possibly a narrow trace of tape. It is on cream laid paper and has never been matted or framed, though the margins are cut fairly close. This little map is amazingly vivid and full of charm. More

New York: Robert McBride & Company, 1937. First Edition. Octavo, 276 pages, with 64 two-color reproductions of Benton's drawings. The book is bound in blue buckram, with a stain at the front edge of the spine and a rather worn though intact dustjacket that shows a panel of Benton 's Missouri mural done for that state's capitol. This copy beloged to Robert E. Nuese Jr., a bookseller in West Cornwall, Connecticut, who was a long-standing friend of Benton's and who owned a number of Benton's paintings. Nuese's bookplate, of which a scan is enclosed, was designed by Benton. This copy is inscribed on the half-title page "To Rbt. E. Nuese from Thomas H. Benton" and also bears a dime-sized squiggle of a drawing that I believe is by Nuese's wife Josephine. It is also signed by Benton's wife Rita, as well as by art historian Thomas Craven. Craven, a long-time friend of Thomas Hart Benton, had been Benton's roommate in Greenwich Village on their respective returns from France and wrote "Thomas Hart Benton: A Descriptive Catalog..." in 1939. Nuese had moved to West Cornwall from his job as an advertising copywriter in New York in 1930, and had founded Hayloft... More

New York: Touchstone, 1966. First and only edition. A set of ten aquatint color etchings by French artist Brigitte Coudrain (1934-), this being number 34 of 100 copies printed by the Atelier George Leblanc in Paris for Touchstone. The etchings are printed on superb hand-made paper folded in leaves, with etched titles on the uppermost leaf, and the aquatints, each signed in the lower right margin, on the folded leaf following. All of the interleaved tissue guards are present. The sheets measure approximately 16" by 11" folded; the size of the etchings vary, but measure roughly 3" x 3". The etchings and the colophon are housed in a tape-tied, cloth-covered portfolio (17" x 12 1/4") with what seem to be two tiny nicks in the cloth and light rubbing on the spine-ends and corners. A publicity leaf for Coudrieu, as well as four other artists -- Jean Miro, Thomas Cornell, Alexander Calder and Nobumitsu Fukui -- are laid in. Fine. More

Paris. A collection of five works by this French Symbolist poet (1892-1960), laid in a custom blue buckram clamshell case lined with patterned paste paper, red morocco spine, leather title patch reading "Oeuvres de Paul Fort", somewhat rubbed. The works, all quarto, in French, and in wrappers, were destined for members of the "Groupe des Amis de Paul Fort" and are as follows: LA POESIE DE PARIS, Paris: Aux Editions de la Marjolaine, 1930, #91/651 copies, 55pp., drawings by Paul Velsch, inscribed by Fort, signed and dated 21 May 1931. CONTES DE MA SOEUR L'OIE, Paris: Armand Jules Klein, 1930, unpaged, with a lithograph of Paul Fort, other illustrations by Gino Severini, 42 / 530 copies, initialled, with a cancel leaf identifying the owner of this copy, and with a long inscription and poem, signed and initialled by Fort, slightly foxed, rear wrapper slightly torn. L'AMOUR ENFANT DE BOHEME. Paris: Armand Jules Klein,1930, quarto, unpaged, 59/500 copies, initialled by Fort on the colophon, inscribed and signed by him on the endpaper, and with a maxim, handwritten and initialled, on a blank leaf; with a portrait of Paul Fort by Ignacio Zuloaga, and other illustrations by Gino Severini. L'AMOUR ENFANT DE... More

Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College, 1929. Portfolio, approximately 20" x 12" (50 x 30 cm), containing 64 gelatin silver prints mounted on heavy board, preceded by a single folded leaf with the title page, a listing of the 64 plates, and a colophon that reads: "The plates were printed by Clarence Kennedy directly from the film negative, on Athena Paper, manufactured by the Eastman Kodak Company. The type was prepared at the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Of this volume fifty-seven copies have been printed, of which this is number 17." This collection of 64 photographs was issued as Studies in the History and Criticism of Sculpture Volume IV, which was part of an eventual seven-volume series of photographic portfolios by Kennedy. This scholar-photographer (1892-1972) was appointed director of Smith College's division of graduate studies in Europe in 1925. This followed by only a few years his studies as a Charles Eliot Norton Fellow of Harvard University at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. According to the National Gallery, Kennedy mounted and assembled each edition himself, and issued each one in extremely limited numbers. The Siphnean Treasury in Delphi dates from approximately 530 BC; the phorographs are of its... More

London: Adam and Charles Black, 1909. Lewis, J. Hardwicke; Lewis, May Hardwicke. First edition. Octavo, x, 360pp., plus a folding map, 4 pages of A.and C. Black ads, and 60 tissue-guarded and captioned full-color plates. Pencilled signature of May Walter Cooper dated1910 on the front free endpaper, slight thinning and browning to endpapers, else fine in blue cloth with a design printed in celadon green, titling in gilt, top edge gilt, one corner very slightly bent (see photograph). A splendid copy. More

Hans Alexander Mueller. This is a collection of 20 signed woodcuts and wood engravings by Hans Alexander Mueller, in Mueller's own paste-paper on board portfolio with the label of the Staatliche Akademie fur Graphische Kunste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig,1926. Mueller (1888-1962) was a student at the academy and then a teacher of wood engraving and director of the academy before he emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, where he was for many years a renowned book illustrator. All of the prints are signed; several also appear in his book "Woodcuts & Wood Engravings: How I Make Them", (1939), a copy of which is included. Many are color engravings. Titles include Allegro Furioso, Scherzo, Italian Landscape, John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Two Men on a Pier, and many others. The woodcuts and engravings are generally in excellent condition: some are rather amateurishly matted in heavy paper; others are laid in loose. One or two are sllightly foxed; several bear corner glue stains. They range in size from 2 1/2" x 2 7/8" to 11" x 14 3/4". Mueller lived until his death in a rural corner of New Milford, Connecticut, where this portfolio was given to a close friend and... More

Paris: A. Quantin, Imprimeur-Editeur, 1881. First edition. Folio, (32.5 x 22.5 cm), xi, 1),402pp. , with a preface by Albert Sensier, a note on Sensier by art critic Paul Mantz, 12 tissue-guarded photoengravings on laid paper by Dujardin, including portraits of Sensier and Millet and reproductions of some of Millet's most famous works, plus 48 b/w illustratations in the text, of which 19 are full-page. The text, of course, is in French. This copy, never cased, is in the original grey paper wrappers printed in red and black, (a copy of the title page), with a 3-cm tear at the top of the rear panel, several short tears at the edges, and vertical paper cracks on the spine. The wrappers are somewhat shelf-soiled and edge-darkened. The top edge is trimmed, the fore and bottom edges are not. Internally there are marginal traces of browning to the first and last leaves, but the remainder of the book, inclusive of the plates, is exceptionally clean. A fine copy. More

New York: The Alcestis Press, 1936. first edition. Octavo, 57 pages, this being number 25 of 165 copies, signed by Tate on the colophon. In addition, this copy is inscribed to poet/writer Mark (Van Doren) on the blank leaf preceding the title page: "To Mark (with the usual misgivings) from Allen July 1, 1936". Allen Tate and Mark Van Doren corresponded for many years; collections of their letters are at Vanderbilt and Columbia. Narrow inner margin stain from the glue used in binding, oherwise a verygood copy in green wrappers, spine and some page edges somewhat darkened. The broken remains of the original slipcase are included. This was Tate's second book. More