John Chamberlain attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1951 to 1952. At that time, he began making flat, welded sculpture, influenced by the work of David Smith. Starting in 1955 Chamberlain studied and taught sculpture at Black Mountain College, near Ashville, North Carolina, where most of his friends were poets, among them Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Charles Olson. By 1957, he began to include scrap metal from cars in his work, and from 1959 onward he concentrated on sculpture built entirely of crushed automobile parts welded together.

Chamberlain’s work was widely acclaimed in the early 1960s. His sculpture was included in The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1961. From 1962, Chamberlain showed frequently at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and in 1964 his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale. While he continued to make sculpture from auto parts, Chamberlain also experimented with other mediums. From 1963 to 1965, he made geometric paintings with sprayed automobile paint. In 1966, the same year he received the first of two fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, he began a series of sculptures of rolled, folded, and tied urethane foam. These were followed in 1970 by sculptures of melted or crushed metal and heat-crumpled Plexiglas. Chamberlain’s work was presented in a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1971.
In the early 1970s, Chamberlain began once more to make large works from automobile parts. Until the mid-1970s, the artist assembled these auto sculptures on the ranch of collector Stanley Marsh in Amarillo, Texas. These works were shown in New York, and in 1973 and at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, in 1975. His next major retrospective was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 1986; the museum simultaneously co-published John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture 1954–1985

Description: Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. Catalogue raisonne to the year 1985. Over 800 pieces! 239 pages profusely illustrated. Published in association with the Museum of Contempoary Art, L.A. A very nice copy of a scarce hard bound edition, bright and clean. Bookseller

Inventory # 16413

SOLD

John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Sculpture, 1954-1985
Sylvester, Julie

Publisher: Hudson Hills Press
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Description: Hard bound third printing with dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY SAUL BELLOW TO THE ARTIST FUMI KOMATSU on the front free endpage ” To Fumi Komatsu fellow artist and best of friends. With good wishes and much affection Saul Bellow”. Wear and a few closed tears chips to dust jacket edges. Some minor foxing, otherwise very good. A RARE INSCRIBED ASSOCIATION COPY!.

Bookseller Inventory # 18359

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The Adventures of Augie March
Bellow, Saul

Publisher: Viking
Publication Date: 1953
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:Good
Signed: Inscribed by Author
Edition: Third Printing

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Donald Deskey studied architecture at the University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of Industrial design. In Paris he attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which influenced his approach to design. He established a design consulting firm in New York City, and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from Art Deco to Streamline Moderne.  In the 1930s, he won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall. In the 1940s he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day. He designed the Crest toothpaste packaging, as well as the Tide bullseye. His company is still in operation in Cincinnati. A collection of his work is held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. 214 pages. One plate cut out (page 179/180) Some wear to dust jacket, and previous owners bookplate to endpage, otherwise very good. A RARE monograph.

Bookseller Inventory # 20792

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Donald Deskey Decorative Designs and Interiors
Hanks, David A.

Publisher: E P Dutton, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1987
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Domenichino ( Domenico Zampieri 1581–1641), was a prominent Italian Baroque era painter of the Bolognese School of painters. He was born in Bologna the son of a shoemaker, and because of his small stature, he was nicknamed Domenichino, “little Domenico.” He left Bologna for Rome in 1602 and became one of the most talented apprentices to emerge from Annibale Carracci’s supervision there. The most classical Bolognese painter of his era, Domenichino sought the ideal form and grandeur known as disegno. By 1614 he had become Rome’s leading painter. In 1621 he began working as architect for Pope Gregory XV

“That he might devote his whole powers to the art, Domenichino shunned all society; or, if he occasionally sought it in the public theaters and walks, this was in order better to observe the play of the passions in the features of the people — those of joy, anger, grief, terror and every affection of the mind — and to commit them vividly to his tablets” -Gian Pietro Bellori

Description: Hard bound catalogue raisonne in 2 volumes (text and plates) A systematic complete study of the artist’s life and work. All known paintings, drawings, lost & rejected works of this master Baroque artist. Previous owners name to front free endpage, otherwise very good. Evelina Borea and Richard Spear have in their well researched catalogue raisonné resurrected the artist from the Victorian graveyard and re-established his place among the most important and influential painters of seventeenth-century Italy. In 1996 the first major exhibition of his work was held at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

Bookseller Inventory # 19121

SOLD

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Description: This title has reached a sort of iconic status among interior decorators and designers. Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. Introduction by Diana Vreeland (probably the most important editor Vogue has ever had). Houses, furniture, collections, gardens and the daily lives of the social elite in America and Europe, all captured in over 200 photographs by Horst P. Horst. A very private look at the “beautiful people” with their homes and gardens arranged to perfection especially for Vogue. This copy shows some minor edge wear and one small close tear to dust jacket. Very minor sunning to spine edge of dust jacket, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. Scarce!.

Bookseller Inventory # 22089

$300

Vogue’s Book of Houses, Gardens, People
Lawford, Valentine

“…the houses and rooms, furniture and collections, gardens and daily lives of some of the most interesting people in America and Europe are here presented in over two hundred beautiful color photographs by Horst…this book provides an opportunity to see how a number of well-known and less well-known people live during their private hours, among the possessions they love and in the surroundings they have planned or improved or cultivated.. for anyone curious about the personalities and habits of some of the most attractive and creative people of our time.”

Publisher: Viking
Publication Date:1968
Binding:Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Anias Nin, feminist icon, diarist, model and dancer is probably one of the finest writers of female erotica of the last century. Known for her elegant and sensual style, she has the ability to convey the most intimate of thoughts in a way that we can almost feel. Here In this, the fifth and final instalment of Nin’s continuous novel project Cities of the Interior we she her at her lyrical and poetic best.

Description: INSCRIBED by Anais Nin ” For Alice - all the overtones you know to well the mysteries - Love Anais”. Some wear to price clipped dust jacket, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 14709

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Seduction of the Minotaur
Anais Nin,

Publisher: Alan Swallow
Publication Date: 1961
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

An impressive documentation of original materials and unpublished projects provides the evidence for this architectural manifesto, which reads, in its insistent tracing of subconscious clues and themes, like a psychological thriller. Manhattan is the arena of the terminal stage of Western Civilization. Through the simultaneous explosion of human destiny and an invasion of new technologies, Manhattan became, from 1850, a mythical laboratory for the invention and testing of a revolutionary lifestyle: the ‘culture of congestion’. Delirious New York is a polemical investigation of that Manhattan; it documents the symbiotic relationship between its mutant metropolitan culture and the unique architecture to which it gave rise. Though this book argues that it often appears that the architectural generated the culture. Delirious New York proves above all, that Manhattan has been, from the beginning, devoted to the most rational, efficient and utilitarian pursuit of the irrational.

Description: Paperback copy with some wear to wrappers. Front free end page clipped, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory# 21159

SOLD

Delirious New York
Koolhaas, Rem

Publisher: Oxford
Publication Date: 1978
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Paperback

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Andre Masson (1896–1987) studied art in Brussels and Paris. His early works display an interest in cubism. He later became associated with surrealism, and he was one of the most enthusiastic employers of automatic drawing, making a number of automatic works in pen and ink. Masson would often force himself to work under strict conditions, for example, after long periods of time without food or sleep, or under the influence of drugs. He believed forcing himself into a reduced state of consciousness would help his art be free from rational control, and hence get closer to the workings of his subconscious mind. From around 1926 he experimented by throwing sand and glue onto canvas and making oil paintings based around the shapes that formed. By the end of the 1920s, however, he was finding automatism rather restricting, and he left the surrealist movement and turned instead to a more structured style, often producing works with a violent or erotic theme, and making a number of paintings in reaction to the Spanish Civil War

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket in publishers slipcase, as issued. Signed by the publisher Patrick Cramer. 300 pages profusely illustrated. Catalogue raisonne of the illustrated books, albums and catalogues of Andre Masson. Very detailed descriptions of 120 works with full color reproductions of the original artwork. an exhaustive survey. A very nice copy with almost no visible wear.

Inventory # 16824

SOLD

Andre Masson the Illustrated Books : Catalogue Raisonne
Cramer, Patrick  &  Saphire, Lawrence

Publisher: Patrick Cramer
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: As New

· Category: Recently Sold ·

An American classic, The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by one of America’s finest novelists and author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller All the Pretty Horses. The novel is set in a small, isolated community in Tennessee, during the inter-war period. It is the story of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger, who has killed Rattner’s father, a fact to which both are oblivious. Woven in beautiful description of harsh surroundings, sudden actions (a swing of a tire iron, a porch falling off a building, or a car falling into a creek) become a turning point changing everything the way a lever’s action is altered by a fulcrum. These unexpected changes become the new environment in which the characters evolve.

Description: Hard bound SECOND PRINTING with price clipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED to the New York collector Dan Frueh on the half title page, and SIGNED BY CORMAC MCARTHY on the front free endpage. A very nice copy brightn and clean in like jacket. A very scarce SIGNED copy of the authors first novel.

Bookseller Inventory# 20036

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The Orchard Keeper
McCarthy, Cormac

Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1965
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Edition: 1st Edition, Second Printing

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Horace Trumbauer was without a doubt one of the most talented Classical Revival Architects this country has ever seen. He was  one of the least “educated” and is certainly one of the most under-appreciated. During his illustrious half-century career, he planned hundreds of residences, from modest suburban houses to sprawling country estates. In the quarter-century leading up to World War I he cemented his reputation as one of the premier Gilded Age architects, designing dozens of the country’s most exquisite and extravagant mansions for captains of industry and finance.

Description: Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. The definitive work on Trumbauer. A rare  monograph, flawless!

Bookseller Inventory # 19100

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American Splendor: The Residential Architecture of Horace Trumbauer
Kathrens, Michael C.

ISBN: 0926494228
Publisher: Acanthus Press, New York
Publication Date: 2002
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Suttree is McCarthy’s semi autobiographical novel set in Knoxville, Tennessee. The novel follows Cornelius Suttree, who has repudiated his former life of privilege to become a fisherman on the Tennessee River. The novel has a fragmented structure with many flashbacks and shifts in grammatical person. Suttree has been compared to James Joyce’s Ulysses, John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Suttree was written over a 30 year span and is a departure from his previous novels, being much longer, more sprawling in structure, and perhaps McCarthy’s most humorous novel.

Description: First printing of the first edition. SIGNED by McCarthy. A nice copy of a very scarce signed McCarthy title.

Bookseller Inventory #21116

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Suttree
McCarthy,Cormac

· Category: Recently Sold ·

New York’s Greenwich Village was to become the backdrop for Dawn Powell’s “New York cycle” of books which feature her biting wit mixed with an unflinching, and some times comical look at urban life. From the 1930’s until the 1960’s Powell continued to document New York literary scene as she saw it. The novels in her “cycle” include: Turn Magic Wheel, The Locusts Have No King, The Wicked Pavilion, A Cage for Lovers, and The Golden Spur. The Golden Spur was nominated for the National Book Award, but it failed to win. On March 8, 1963, Dawn wrote in her diary:

“Was told yesterday I had not won the National Book Award. I felt some relief as I have no equipment for prize-winning—no small talk, no time for idle graciousness and required public show, no clothes either or desire for front. I realize I have no yen for any experience (even a triumph) that blocks observation, when I am the observed instead of the observer. Time is too short to miss so many sights.”

Some critics believe that her distaste for pretension associated with self-promotion contributed to Dawn Powell’s lack of commercial success during her lifetime. She avoided the spotlight, preferring to let her work do the speaking for her.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Some wear to edges of boards . Rubbing to dust jacket. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 15769

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A Cage for Lovers
Powell, Dawn

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Publication Date: 1957
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Portnoy’s Complaint is possibly Philip Roth’s most popular novel, and along with Saul Bellow’s Herzog, defined Jewish American literature in the 1960s. A continuous monologue as narrated by its speaker, Alexander Portnoy, to his psychoanalyst, Dr. Spielvogel, the narration weaves through time and describes scenes from each stage in Portnoy’s life. Every recollection in some way touches upon Portnoy’s central dilemma: his inability to enjoy the fruits of his sexual adventures even as his extreme urges force him to seek release in ever more creative and in his mind degrading and shameful acts of eroticism. Portnoy’s Complaint is also emblematic of the times during which it was published. Most obviously, the book’s sexual frankness was both a product of and an inspiration for the sexual revolution that was in full swing during the late 1960s.

Description: SIGNED TWICE BY PHILIP ROTH! Hard bound in cream cloth, no dust jacket. In publishers red slipcase as issued. INSCRIBED BY PHILIP ROTH “May 1971, To __ for his thoughtful gift - Philip Roth” #384 in a limited edition of 600 printed copies SIGNED AND HAND NUMBERED BY PHILIP ROTH. Minor wear to slipcase, otherwise very good. SCARCE!

Bookseller Inventory # 20483

SOLD

Portnoy’s Complaint
Roth, Philip

Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1969
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket
Signed: Inscribed by Author
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

George Barbier was one of the great French illustrators of the early 20th century. He was only 29 years old in 1911 when he was swept to the forefront of his profession with commissions to design theatre and ballet costumes, to illustrate books, and to produce haute couture illustrations. During his career Barbier also turned his hand to jewellery, glass and wallpaper design. In the mid 1920s he worked with Erté to design sets and costumes for the Folies Bergère. He achieved mainstream popularity through his regular appearances in L’Illustration magazine. Barbier died in 1932 at the very pinnacle of his success

Description: First printing, limited edition #254 of 275 copies. Stiff wraps with glassine overlay. Text in French by Edmond Jaloux. Original frontispiece etching by Charles Martin (portrait of Barbier)  25 Art Deco lithographic plates pochoir-painted by Georges Barbier. The plates are tipped-in on tinted Arches paper, each signed by the artist in the plate, with the original tissue guards. Tanning to glassine overlay, and some minor offsetting to endpage, otherwise fine. A RARE & BEAUTIFUL EDITION!

Bookseller inventory # 21135

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Vingt-cinq Costumes pour le Theatre
Barbier, George

Publisher: Camille Block & Jues Meynial, Paris
Publication Date: 1927
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Emmet Gowin sought his subject matter from within his own life. Following his marriage to Edith Morris in 1964 Gowin began taking memorable portraits of his wife and extended family in Virginia. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, Gowin studied under influential American photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Gowin now teaches at Princeton.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. SIGNED BY EMMET GOWIN on the front free endpage. Essay by Emmet Gowin. Some minor wear to dust jacket corners and edges, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 21156

SOLD

Emmet Gowin: Photographs
Gowin, Emmet

Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: 1976
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·