The Baron Von Ketteler was the German Ambassador to China in the late 1800′s, his murder set off the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. On on the 20th of June the conservative faction of the Imperial Court induced the Empress Dowager to declare war on the foreign powers in Beijing. Diplomats, foreign civilians, soldiers and some Chinese Christians retreated to the Legation Quarter where they held out for fifty-five days until the Eight-Nation Alliance brought 20,000 troops to their rescue. The Ketteler Monument was erected in everlasting commemoration of his name, and as an eternal token of the Emperor’s wrath, and as a warning to all!

Description: Original leather binding with gilt titles, raised bands & lovely marbled endpapers. Gold hand tooling to spine edge. Fold out engraved print pasted in. Text in French. An anecdotal overview of China, Japan, Siam, Tonkin, Burma, and Laos by the French author Jean Castillon (1718-1799). BOOKPLATE FROM THE BARONESS MAUD “MATILDA” VON KETTELER affixed to front fixed end page. Hinges tender but holding, wear to edges of boards with some loss of leather. Interior shows some minor foxing, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 25400

$450

Anecdotes Chinoises
Castillon, Jean

Publisher: Chez Vincent, Paris
Publication Date: 1774
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Antiquarian & Leather Bound ·

Kenro Izu has been photographing the world’s holy places for over four decades. He shoots with a large-format camera custom fitted to make 14 x 20 inch negatives, which he prints on watercolor paper hand-coated with platinum/palladium emulsion, a painstaking, three-day process. For this book he carried over 200 pounds of gear on foot deep into the still-treacherous Cambodian jungle. The reproductions in this book are themselves rich, the blacks saturated and gradation of grays without limit. Profusely illustrated with the beautifuly printed photographs of the architecture of Angkor.

Of the many sacred sites that Kenro Izu has photographed, Angkor Wat has undoubtedly become his most significant spiritual and psychological subject. During a series of photography trips to Cambodia’s Angkor monuments, Izu became deeply moved by his encounters with children disfigured by landmines and desperate need of medical care. As a way of returning something to Cambodia he founded a not-for profit organization, Friends Without A Border and built Angkor Hospital for Children in 1999. He has been responsible for its operation since.

Description: Signed and dated by Kenro Izu. Paperback copy with some tanning to the edges white wrappers. Previous owners name to front fee end page, otherwise fine. Interior clean and binding tight. A very scarce signed edition.

Bookseller Inventory # 17073

$500

Light Over Ancient Angkor
Izu, Kenro

Publisher: Friends Without a Border
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed

· Category: Featured Items, Photography, Signed & Inscribed ·

Nelson Algren was the first recipient of the National Book Award for fiction in 1950. He will be best remembered for his portrayal of societies discards, the addicts, the hookers, the poor hustling the poor, the washed up & down for the count. His novels capture the mood of the city’s underside, uplifted only by his characters’ pride, humor, and unquenchable yearnings. Among his popular successes were The Man with the Golden Arm and  A Walk on the Wild Side, both of which went on to be adapted into successful films. Algren was known to have had a 17 year long love affair with Simone de Beauvoir, he died May 9, 1981 in Sag Harbor, where is now buried.

“Never play cards with a man called Doc…
Never eat at a place called Mom’s….
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own”
- Nelson Algren  A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)

Description: INSCRIBED BY NELSON ALGREN WITH AN ORIGINAL DRAWING OF A CAT. Algren’s third book, a collection of 24 short stories that established Algren in the pantheon of American writers. I nscribed to the famous New York bibliophile Burt Britton “with best wishes to Burt Britton from Nelson Algren N.Y.C. Oct 11 1975“.  In the 1970s, while working at the Strand bookstore in NYC Burt Britton assembled more than 500 self-portraits for a now well know book Self-Portrait: Book People Picture Themselves. His collection of original drawings & signatures was sold through Bloomsbury auction house in 2009. He was also instrumental in the the creation of the landmark New York book shop Books & Co. This copy shows some minor wear to Second state jacket with reviews on rear panel. Edge wear to boards. Some age toning, otherwise very good. A scarce New York association copy!

Bookseller Inventory# 26992

SOLD

The Neon Wilderness
Algren, Nelson

Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date: 1948
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter who’s life was marked with controversy. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele’s work is noted for its intensity, twisted body shapes and expressive line. His paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism. His work is often erotic or pornographic, sometimes with a disturbing focus on sex & death. In 1911, Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Valerie “Wally” Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna and served as model for some of his most striking paintings. Schiele and Wally left Vienna and went to a small town in southern Bohemia. Soon however they were driven out of the town by the residents, who strongly disapproved of their lifestyle. In 1912, the artist was imprisoned for a short period of time because of his way of painting very young nude models that was thought to be immoral. The magistrate made a point of personally burning one of Schiele’s drawings before the assembled crowd. 1915 marked a turning-point in Schiele’s life. Some time in the previous year he had met his future wife Edith, and by April 1915 he was engaged to her. In the fall of 1918 Edith fell ill with Spanish influenza and died. Almost immediately Egon came down with the same sicknes and died three days later, he was only 28.

Description: CATALOGUE RAISONNE with text in German & English. Hard bound, no dust jacket. In publishers card board slipcase, as issued. Some age toning to spine edge of boards, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound. Numerous color plates, photographic illustrations. Bilingual text contributions by Otto Benesch & Thomas Messer. 559 pages. A scarce and sought after monograph on the artist!

Bookseller Inventory# 28562

$225

Egon Schiele: Oeuvre-Katalog der Gemalde
Kallir, Otto

Title: Egon Schiele: Oeuvre-Katalog der Gemalde
Publisher: Paul Zsolnay
Publication Date: 1966
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Art, Featured Items, Recent Acquisitions ·

Pablo Picasso was the most influential artist of the 20th century. He is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures of the 20th century art world. Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. Picasso’s final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. From 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. Only later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.

Description: INSCRIBED & SIGNED BY PABLO PICASSO! Black paper covers with gilt design of a bird, white lettering, with each plate on a separate page, 2 pages of English text. Published on the occasion of the November 1971 exhibition in association with The Weintraub Gallery, New York. Mild edge wear, mild interior foxing. Text block is separating from spine, visible at interior front hinge. Minor wear to wrappers and 2 small creases, otherwise very good. Inscribed to the previous owner and signed with Love, Picasso!

$1000

Picasso: Histoire Naturelle De Buffon
31 Cancelled Original Copper Plates
Picasso, Pablo

Publisher: Weintraub Gallery, New York, New York
Publication Date: 1971
Signed: Inscribed & signed by Pablo Picasso
Size: 9 & 1/4 inches – square

· Category: Art, Featured Items, Recent Acquisitions ·

Marilyn Monroe was the quintessential sex symbol of the 1950s. An American actress, singer, and model she became a major film star after starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures of the 1950s. She is arguably the most celebrated of all actresses, and although she made only 30 films in her lifetime, her legendary status and mysticism will remain with film history forever.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Blue cloth boards with titles in orange. A very nice copy with only the most minor wear to dust jacket edges. Over 2500 shots that make up this monumental classic tribute to Marilyn Monroe were taken by renowned fashion photographer Bert Stern over the course of a three-day sitting-the last time Marilyn would pose in front of a camera. Six weeks later, the actress was found dead in her home. Even despite the ominous facts surrounding this sitting, the images it produced project a haunting, almost dreamlike quality unlike any photographs ever taken of the starlet.

Bookseller Inventory# 28763

Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting
Stern, Bert

SOLD

Publisher: Germany: Schirmer/Mosel Verlag Gmbh
Publication Date: 1992
Edition: First printing of the 1992 complete edition
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Antoni Tàpies gained worldwide fame in the 1950s for his “matter” paintings: relief-like works composed of dry pigments, sand and marble dust, and paint, which he scrapes, incises, and pierces. Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau-al-Set which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. Tàpies early works were influenced by Paul Klee and Joan Miró; but statrted working in a style known as “Arte Povera”, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into the paintings such as clay, dust, paper, and string. Fundació Antoni Tàpies, a museum dedicated to the artist’s work, that he founded in Barcelona in 1984, has gone on to become one of that city’s most vital cultural institutions. In 2010, he was given the title of Marquess de Tàpies in the Spanish nobility. That same year, Fundació Antoni Tàpies reopened after a huge remodeling. In New York, Mr. Tàpies had one-person shows at Dia:Beacon in 2009 and at the Museum of Modern Art in 1992. Antoni Tàpies, the painter from Catalan who straddled both modernist and postmodernist aesthetics, has died this week according to Pace, the artist’s gallery in New York. He was 88.

Description: Hard bound art exhibition catalog published on the occasion of the landmark Jan. 27, 1999 exhibition organized by the Guggenheim Museum. Presents the essence of Tàpies’ monumental achievement “an original and extraordinary use of texture and materials coupled with an expression of strongly felt intellectual, political, and artistic beliefs.” This volume also includes an overview of the artist’s life by the famed art historian Dore Ashton, as well as translations of four of the artist’s principal writings on art.

Bookseller Inventory # 16509

$250

Tapies
Gimenez, Carmen

Publisher: Abrams, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

New York based photographer Bruce Davidson began his career as a freelance contributor for Life Magazine in the 1950′s. In Paris met Henri Cartier-Bresson, and later would join him as a member of Magnum Photos. Throughout the 1960′s he helped document the civil rights movement, and in 1963 he was awarded the first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He spent the next several years documenting the human struggle within one city block in Manhattan; East 100th in Harlem.

Description: Hard bound first printing in dust jacket. This copy was inscribed by Davidson to the photographer Paul Ickovic for his help and oversight in the publication process. Inscribed on the half title page “To Paul Thank you for making this book reproduction possible Bruce Davidson 79′ “. Very minor tanning to spine edge of white dust jacket, otherwise very good.  A rare photographic association copy.

Bookseller Inventory # 13746

$900

Bruce Davidson Photographs
Davidson, Bruce

Publisher: Agrinde
Publication Date: 1978
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Photographer
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Photography, Signed & Inscribed ·

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Third revised edition (This volume combines two previous issues of El Croquis, #53 & #79) Profusely illustrated throughout with color plates, drawings, renderings, plans, sketches, and models. A very nice overview of the work of the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Text in Spanish and English. Minor wear to dust jacket, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory # 23906

SOLD

OMA / Rem Koolhaas 1987-1998
Cecilia, Fernando Marquez

Publisher: El Croquis, Spain
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an American author and aviator. Gift from the Sea was written by Lindbergh, while on vacation on Florida’s Captiva Island in the early 1950s. Written in an essay-style, with shells on the beach for inspiration, Lindbergh reflects on the lives of  American women of the mid-twentieth century. With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth & age; love & marriage; peace, solitude and contentment during her visit. Gift from the Sea has sold over 3 million copies and has been translated into 45 languages. Ground-breaking for it’s time, it stands today as a seminal work of inspirational literature.

Description: TRUE FIRST EDITION. Hard bound with dust jacket. Beige boards with decorative shells, blue cloth spine with white lettering. Meets points of issue – $2.75 price, beige boards, no additional printings listed on copyright page, author photo to rear of dust jacket. Some wear to edges and corners of boards. Minor soiling to dust jacket that shows a few small tears and chips, now in protective Brodart cover. Foxing to page edges and end pages, otherwise with interior clean and binding sound. A scarce first printing of this modern inspirational classic and perennial bestseller!

Bookseller inventory # 28519

Gift From The Sea
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow

$300

Publisher: Pantheon
Publication Date: 1955
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Literary First Editions, Recent Acquisitions ·

Dorothea Tanning was the last important living surrealist painter of her generation. She died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan, at the age of 101. Tanning moved to New York in the early 1930s where she discovered Dada and Surrealism. By the early 1940s Tanning was working on her own surreal paintings while supporting herself as a commercial artist. In 1942 she met Max Ernst, they played chess, fell in love, and were later married in a double wedding along with Man Ray and Juliet Browner. She has developed her own individual style over the course of a career that spaned seven decades.

Description: Paperback published on the occasion of the May 9, 1992 exhibition held by the New York Public Library. 108 pages. Some wear to wrappers, otherwise very good. A complete Catalogue Raisonne of the Artist’s Illustrated Books and Prints to 1991. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory# 16299

$100

Dorothea Tanning: Hail, Delirium!
a Catalogue Raisonne of the Artist’s Illustrated Books and Prints, 1942-1991
Waddell, Roberta

Title: Dorothea Tanning: Hail, Delirium!
Publisher: New York Public Library, New York
Publication Date: 1992
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Good

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Don Quixote is often cited as the best literary work ever written! The History Of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote Of La Mancha is a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes, published in two volumes a decade apart, in 1605 and again in 1615. Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.  At it’s core, it’s the tale of the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha, along with his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain.

Description: Library edition in complete in 4 volumes, in publishers matching box. Hard bound with original brown cloth with paper labels printed in red and black on the spines. No dust jackets, as issued. Un-trimmed page edges and gilt top stain. Richly illustrated throughout with 37 engravings designed and etched by Ad. Lalauze. A scarce edition edited by J.G. Lockhart who also wrote the included essay on the Life of Cervantes. Motteux, the translator, possesses a native humor which no other translator has yet approached. His translation is one of the most famous of the period. Wear to boards and spine labels. Interiors & engravings clean. Publishers box shows damage with cracks wear and several tears, still overall a good set of working copies with beautiful etchings.

Bookseller Inventory# 28859

$125

The History Of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote Of La Mancha
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de

Publisher: John Grant, Edinburgh
Publication Date: 1908
Binding: Hard Cover
Illustrator: Lalauze
Book Condition:  Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket, as issued

· Category: Antiquarian & Leather Bound, Recent Acquisitions ·