Le Corbusier was a modernist visionary. He believed that architecture had lost its way. Art Nouveau, all curves and sinuous decorations, had burned itself out in a brilliant burst of exuberance; the seductive Art Deco style promised to do the same. The Arts and Crafts movement had adherents all over Europe, but as the name implies, it was hardly representative of an industrial age. Le Corbusier maintained that this new age deserved a brand-new architecture. It was to become known as the International Style : raise the building on stilts, mix in a free-flowing floor plan, make the walls independent of the structure, add horizontal strip windows and top it off with a roof garden. In 1907, he traveled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of Reinforced concrete. Between October 1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens where he met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned 8 decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an “Urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, modern furniture designer.

Description: Hard bound with price clipped dust jacket. Published in association with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Color frontispiece. Profusely illustrated in b&w from photographs, plans, and drawings, and art works. Some wear to dust jacket edges, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound. A rare and sought after design monograph!

Bookseller Inventory # 29410

SOLD

New World Of Space: Some Day Through Unanimous Effort Unity Will Reign Once More In The Major Arts: City Planning And Architecture, Sculpture, Painting
Le Corbusier

Publisher: Reynal and Hitchcock
Publication Date: 1948
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read.  Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse’s main canvas remained that of pre-war English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling. Remembered today for his Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels, P. G. Wodehouse is considered the best British Humor writers of his time!

Description: Possibly the rarest of all P. G. Wodehouse titles… the elusive 1915 true first edition of Something New. This First U.S. Edition was published on September 3, 1915, under the title Something New. This edition precedes the U.K. edition, published later that year by Methuen under the new title Something Fresh. This is the 1st novel of the “the Blandings Castle Saga”, and introduces the reader to Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle. There are some significant differences between the true first edition and the later UK edition, though they do not affect the main plot. This True First Edition meets points of issue. Illustrated by F. R. Gruger. Hard bound in original dust jacket. Red cloth boards decorated with gilt titles and scarab beetle. Published by D. Appleton & Co., New York in 1915. Original publishers $1.35 price printed on spine edge. Some minor edge wear to boards which seem slightly cocked. Some minor foxing to page edges, otherwise with interior clean and pages bright. All b&w plates in fine condition. The dust jacket shows some wear and foxing. Tiny chips to spine edges and one small closed tear, otherwise very good. This edition is almost impossible to find in original dust jacket. This jacket now protected in removable archival Brodart protective cover.

Bookseller Inventory # 29959

SOLD

Something New
Wodehouse, P. G.

Publisher: D. Appleton & Co., New York
Publication Date: 1915
Binding: Hard Bound in Dust Jacket
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First U. S. Edition (true 1st edition)

· Category: Sold ·

Moby Dick is considered to be one of the Great American Novels and a treasure of world literature. Written by Herman Melvile The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by the mad Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out a specific whale “Moby Dick”, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab’s boat and bit off his leg, which now drives Ahab to take his revenge.

Approached in 1926 by publisher R. R. Donnelley to produce an illustrated edition of Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast, Kent suggested Moby Dick instead. Published in 1930 by the Lakeside Press of Chicago, the three volume limited edition filled with Kent’s haunting black and white drawings sold out immediately. Random House produced this trade edition which was also immensely popular. A previously obscure book, the success of the Rockwell Kent illustrated edition was a factor in its becoming recognized as a modern classic.

Description: Hard bound, no dust jacket. First Rockwell Kent trade edition, first printing. Bound in black boards with silver lettering and picture of breaching whale on front. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent with woodcuts throughout the text, with full-page plates, chapter head- and tailpieces, other smaller cuts in the text. Wear to boards with edges and corners threadbare. Minor staining to page edges. Front hinge cracked, but holding well. This edition has been credited with contributing greatly to the rediscovery of Moby Dick as a modern classic – Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 29408

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Moby Dick
Melvile, Herman

Title: Moby Dick
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1930
Binding: Hardcover
Illustrator: Kent, Rockwell
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Thus

· Category: Sold ·

Chuck Close is one of the most important contemporary artists in America. His drawings, paintings, photographs and prints have been the focus of more than one hundred and forty solo exhibitions in over twenty countries. Chuck Close first made a name for himself for his skillful brushwork, and his very large portraits based on photographs of family and friends. In 1988 Close suffered a seizure which left him paralyzed, and has relied on a wheelchair since. Termed “The Event” it became a major turning point in his career as a painter. Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image although in pixelated form.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. CHUCK CLOSE SIGNED BOOKPLATE affixed to front free endpage! Massive – Revised edition. 352 pages. Profusely illustrated with full color plates. Includes an exhibition checklist, bibliography,and index. A beautiful copy with no visible wear, and a scarce signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory # 23528

SOLD

Chuck Close: Work
Finch, Christopher

Publisher: Prestel
Publication Date: 2010
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Signed: Signed by Artist

· Category: Sold ·