Langston Hughes was an American poet, activist, novelist, and playwright. Hughes is best remembered as a seminal member of the 1920’s Harlem Renaissance, the African American artistic movement that celebrated black life and culture.

Description: SIGNED BY LANGSTON HUGHES on the front free end page. Hardbound w/ Dust Jacket. First Edition. Dust Jacket shows wear to its edges with some tears and chipping around the spine and corners. Light fading to the spine of the jacket. The book shows light wear to the edges of its boards – otherwise in very good condition. There are a few notes written in pencil in the margins of the book but the interior is otherwise clean. Binding sound. RARE!

Bookseller Inventory # 71350

The Big Sea
Langston Hughes

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Paul Rand is acknowledged as one of the most important graphic designers of all time. He began his career in an era when working by hand was a given. He developed a fresh and individual design language drawn from European art movements including Russian constructivism, de Stijl, and the Bauhaus. He is probably best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, and  ABC. He taught design at Yale University, and was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972.

Description: Signed and inscribed by Paul Rand on the front free end page. Dust Jacket shows light wear and light damp staining to its edges. Old price sticker affixed to the back cover. Board edges show light wear and signs of use but book is otherwise in very good condition. Interior clean and binding sound. RARE! 239 pages profusely illustrated with the work of Paul Rand, many in full color. A Rare copy, signed by the legendary graphic designer Paul Rand!

Bookseller Inventory# 69519

Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art
Rand, Paul

$250

· Category: Featured ·

Growing up in Upper Manhattan, close to Harlem, Dennis Stock was exposed to jazz at an early age. As a child, Stock would accompany his father to the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, where prominent jazz musicians of the time such as Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie would perform. These experiences would prove to be formative, sparking an interest that he would later return to as a photographer. In 1957, Stock embarked upon a journey inspired by those early memories that would culminate in one of his best-known bodies of work: ‘Jazz Street’.

Description: SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY DENNIS STOCK. Stated 1st Edition. Hard bound in priced clipped dust jacket. Pages show minor toning, otherwise in very good condition. RARE!

Bookseller Inventory # 48363

Jazz Street:
A Photographic Exploration into the World of Jazz
Dennis Stock; Nat Hentoff

$450

· Category: Featured ·

The Catcher in the Rye has been consistently listed as one of the best novels of the twentieth century. It was originally intended for adults but is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst and alienation, and as a critique on superficiality in society. Salinger managed to capture the exact moment between childhood and maturity, the unique moment between both worlds. Told in a realism and colloquial prose that has yet to be matched…. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap,” Holden Caulfield said. “But I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Description: VERY RARE TRUE FIRST EDITION! Hardcover w/ First State Dust Jacket, First Edition / First Printing. Little, Brown and Co. 1951.  Meets Points of Issue: 1st Edition Stated on copyright page. Dust Jacket has Lotte Jacobi photography credit on back panel, and $3.00 price on Dust Jacket flap. Not a Book-of-the-Month Book Club edition! Loss to head and tail of Dust Jacket spine, and sun-fading to what remains of it. The front panel of the dust jacket has a closed tear to its upper left corner, but is very bright! There is wear to the edges and corners of the jacket, but it is overall in good condition. This is a first state jacket with slight cropping of Salinger’s head on its back panel! The gilt on the book’s spine has worn away, but besides that it has only minor shelf wear – slight bumping to the head and tail of the spine and very minor wear to the edges of the boards. There is foxing to the edge of the text block and slight offsetting from publisher’s glue darkening the interior front and back hinge – common to titles from this period. Besides these flaws, the interior of the book is clean and free of any writing or similar markings! Overall, the book is in very good condition! Binding sound!

Bookseller Inventory # 61631

The Catcher In The Rye
J. D. Salinger

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Andy Warhol was a painter, printmaker, filmmaker and the leading figure in the POP Art movement. Appropriating images from popular culture, Warhol created many paintings that remain icons of 20th-century art, such as the Campbell’s Soup Cans, Disasters and Marilyns. He was known in the late sixties and early seventies as resident host at his studio, The Factory. Warhol also made several 16mm films which have now become underground classics. The core of his autobiography reads like a collection of sound-bites, moving amongst the anecdotes and aphorisms. His descriptions of inner thoughts and perceptions are candid and unblinking, ranging from moments of elucidation to mildly eccentric digressions on the seemingly trivial and banal. Warhol talks about love, sex, beauty, fame, work, money, success, New York, Americana; and mostly about himself.

Description: SIGNED BY ANDY WARHOL in black marker with his initials on the front free end page. Hard bound with dust jacket. Quarter orange cloth over yellow paper covered boards. Some minor edge wear, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 19310

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From a to B and Back Again
by Andy Warhol

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Man Ray was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. He was best known for his photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called “rayographs” in reference to himself. Significant members of the art world, such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau,  Antonin Artaud, & Dali all posed for his camera.

Description: Original spiral bound color photographically illustrated stiff wrappers. Wear to wrappers, with original spiral binding damaged. Some minor foxing, otherwise very good. This important work is Man Ray’s first monograph. It begins with a portrait drawing of Man Ray by Pablo Picasso and consists of 104 photographs divided into five sections. The Man Ray photographs contained in this edition are regarded by some as the greatest of the twentieth century. As this was Man Ray’s first monograph, his friends pulled out all the stops to herald it. It contains poetry and essays by the leading figures of the Dada and Surrealist movements: André Breton, Paul Éluard, Marcel Duchamp (written under his famous pseudonym “Rrose Selavy”) and Tristan Tzara. Containing 84 stunning full page black and white monochromes (photographs) and 19 rayographs. Very rare and sought after!

Bookseller Inventory #49095

Man Ray Photographs 1920-1934
Man Ray

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

James Baldwin broke new literary ground with his exploration of racial issues. Baldwin was profoundly marked by three distinctive identities in his life…  being black… being poor, and being homosexual. Social discrimination would be a recurring theme throughout  his work, especially his writing on the black experience in America. Baldwin became one of the most prominent figures of the Civil Rights Movement, and along with Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, became spokesman for the entire generation of black writers. Blues For Mr. Charlie is James Baldwin’s best known play. Baldwin said it is based distantly on the true story of the Mississippii youth Emmett Till, who in 1955 was murdered for whistling at a white woman.

Description: SIGNED BY JAMES BALDWIN on the front free end page. Hard bound with original Bernard Brussel-Smith designed dust jacket. First edition, with $3.95 on inner front flap of dust jacket.  Some shelf wear to dust jacket, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound.

Bookseller Inventory # 33906

Blues For Mister Charlie
Baldwin, James

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

The Sheltering Sky is a 1949 novel of post-colonial alienation and existential despair by American writer and composer Paul Bowles. The story centers around Port Moresby and his wife Kit, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the North African desert accompanied by their friend Tunner. The journey, initially an attempt by Port and Kit to resolve their marital difficulties, is quickly fraught by the travelers’ ignorance of the dangers that surround them.  In his 1949 review for The New York Times, Tennessee Williams remarked, “With the hesitant exception of one or two war books by returned soldiers, The Sheltering Sky alone of the books that I have recently read by American authors appears to bear the spiritual imprint of recent history in the western world.”.

Description: TRUE FIRST EDITION. First printing of the first edition. Hard bound in dust jacket. Meets all points of issue including $2.75 price on dust jacket.  Some minor wear to page edges and boards, otherwise with interior clean and binding sound. The original Lustig designed dust jacket shows several tears, with spine edges and corners chipped. Now protected in clear removable mylar cover. The Sheltering Sky tells the story of an American couple who travel from New York to Northern Africa during the waning years of the colonial era. An instant critical and popular success, The Sheltering Sky established Bowles as an important American author. Rare and sought after!

Bookseller Inventory # 41673

The Sheltering Sky
Bowles, Paul

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Massimo Vignelli was an acclaimed graphic designer who probably more than anyone else, is credited for introducing a European Modernist point of view to American graphic design. Vignelli’s work has been exhibited in North America and Europe. It is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, as well as museums in Philadelphia, Montreal, Jerusalem, Munich and Hamburg, Germany. He will be best remembered for his focus on simplicity, and his use of basic geometric forms, a theme throughout all of his work.

Description: INSCRIBED BY MASSIMO VIGNELLI in silver on the front free end page “To Natasha Hopkinson with congratulations –  Massimo Vignelli”. Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of the first edition.  Original black cloth, title blind-stamped on upper cover, spine lettered in white. Writing in pen on page 262, otherwise with interior clean. Vignelli Associates work in the modernist tradition, focusing on simplicity through the use of basic geometric forms. Their designs range from package design to furniture design and from public signage to showroom design.

Bookseller Inventory # 31096

Design: Vignelli
Celant, Germano

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Christian Dior was arguably the most important fashion designer of the twentieth century. One of a handful of designers who dominated 20th century fashion along with Coco Chanel, Paul Poiret & Yves Saint Laurent. His career was launched in 1947 with his very first collection, in which he introduced the “New Look“. Featuring rounded shoulders, a cinched waist, and very full skirt, the New Look celebrated ultra-femininity and opulence. After years of military and civilian uniforms, sartorial restrictions and shortages, Dior offered not merely a new look but a new outlook. While the House of Dior is still a thriving business today, Dior’s untimely death in 1957 left the fashion world without a great dictator of style. Christian Dior designed under his own name for only a decade, but his influence will be felt for many years to come.

Description: Dior Autobiography. Hard bound with 1/2 jacket wrapped around, as issued. 238 pages with 12 B/W photographs. Text in French. Moire-type pink endpapers. Gray cloth boards with title stamped in black to upper spine edge. Preface de Pierre Gaxotte de l’Academie Francaise. Some minor wear to edges of cloth boards, otherwise good.

Bookseller Inventory # 20780

Christian Dior et Moi
Dior, Christian

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·