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

SOLD

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 ·

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: Sold ·

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: Sold ·

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

SOLD

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: Sold ·

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

SOLD

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: Sold ·

Patrick Leigh Fermor widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest travel writers. Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE (1915–2011) was a British author, scholar and soldier. A BBC journalist once described him as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.” He played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. For a year and a half Leigh Fermor, disguised as a Cretan shepherd endured a perilous existence, living in freezing mountain caves while spying on German troops. In April of 1944, dressed as German police corporal, he stopped the car belonging to General Karl Kreipe, the island’s commander. The chauffeur disposed of, Leigh Fermor donned the general’s hat and, with his accomplice Moss driving the car, they bluffed their way through 22 checkpoints. The General meanwhile, was hidden under the back seat. For three weeks the group evaded German search parties. Hunted by German patrols, the group moved across the mountains to reach the southern side of the island, where a British Motor Launch was to pick them up. Eventually, on 14 May 1944, they were picked up and transferred to Egypt with their prisioner. Patrick Leigh Fermor was awarded a military OBE in 1943 and was appointed a Companion of Literature in 1991. He received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List, 2004.

Fermor  lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife, Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani. Roumeli is not to be found on present-day maps. It is the name once given to northern Greece—stretching from the Bosporus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth, a name that evokes a world where the present is inseparably bound up with the past. His books His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. Celebrated not only for his books but for his wartime exploits, He is, perhaps, the last of a breed of writer-travelers whose reputation has an aura of genuine action and courage.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First edition stated. Wear to dust jacket that shows sunning to spine edge. Some edge wear to blue cloth boards, otherwise with interior clean and binding sound. Scarce! Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Roumeli takes the reader among Sarakatsan shepherds, the monasteries of Meteora and the villages of Krakora. Roumeli is not on modern maps: it is the ancient name for the lands from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth.

Bookseller Inventory# 28626

SOLD

Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece
Fermor, Patrick Leigh

Publisher: Harper & Row, Publishers, New York
Publication Date: 1966
Edition:First U.S. Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

 Karl Bodmer was a Swiss painter of the American West. He accompanied German explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied from 1832 through 1834 on his Missouri River expedition. He was hired as an artist by Maximilian with the specific intent of traveling through the American West and recording images of the different tribes they saw along the way. Karl  Bodmer produced realistic and very detailed paintings of members of various tribes and the landscapes he encountered. His style of painting, although influenced by European Romanticism, has been described as unprecedented in its realism. Today the majority of hisoriginal original water colors are located in three collections in the United States, with the majority of them located at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. They are among the most painstakingly accurate painted images ever made of Native Americans, their culture & artifacts, as well as the scenery of the pristine “Old West”.

Description: Oblong hard back in dust jacket. Bilingual Edition, with text in German & English. 81 full page, single sided prints on heavy stock, including 10 Beautiful hand colored plates! Limited edition, #366 of 1000. Some wear to dust jacket, now in protective Brodart cover. Damp staining to lower edge of green cloth boards. Some foxing to page edges. Foxing to gate-fold map, bound in. Several plats show very minor foxing, otherwise with interior clean & binding tight. Scarce and sought after!

Bookseller Inventory# 28620

SOLD

Bildatlas: Reise zu den Indianern am oberen Missouri 1832 – 1834
Picture Atlas: Travel to the Indians of the Upper Missouri 1832 – 1834
Bodmer, Karl

Title: Picture Atlas: Travel to the Indians of the Upper Missouri
Publisher: Hermann Bender, Germany
Publication Date: 1970
Binding: Hardcover
Dust Jacket: Dust Jacket Included
Edition: Limited edition #366 of 1000

· Category: Sold ·

Ed Ruscha has become know for his deadpan irreverence, and his Pop inspired art work. He holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confronts us daily. Born in Omaha in 1937, He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950′s where he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute. By the early sixties he had made a name for himself for his collage, painting and printmaking, and for his association with the Ferrus Gallery group. Later he achieved recognition for his painting incorporating words and phrases and for his many photographic books.

Description: INSCRIBED BY ED RUSCHA “Best to Chris! Ed Ruscha”. First Edition 1/2000. 64 pages with 37 color plates. Published on the occasion of the 1997 Leo Castelli Gallery exhibition and in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their working relationship with Ed Ruscha. 17 “Cityscape” paintings and 20 exhibited books emblazoned with either paint or bleach by the artist to reveal the letter “O”. Some very minor sunning to edges of wrappers, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory# 26144
SOLD

Edward Ruscha: Cityscapes / O Books
Ruscha, Ed

Publisher: Leo Castelli Gallery
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Soft cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

The Algonquin Round Table was a group of journalists, writers, actors, & press agents that met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel in the heart of Midtown. After World War I, Vanity Fair writers and Algonquin regulars Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Robert E. Sherwood began lunching at The Algonquin. Together they helped define American taste in the arts for about a decade. Perhaps their greatest contribution was the founding of The New Yorker magazine. Though society columns referred to them as The Algonquin Round Table, they called themselves the Vicious Circle. Dorothy Parker and her friends were immortalized in 1987 in the Academy Award-winning documentary, The Ten Year Lunch. In 1994, the group was once again transported to the big screen in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker.

Description: Hard bound, no dust jacket. 310 pages. First printing.  INSCRIBED BY THE ALGONQUIN HOTEL’S OWNER – Ben B. Bodine, THE FRONT DESKMAN of more than 40 years – Alfred F. Mitchell, AND THE HEAD WAITER – Raul, dated March 16 – 51. Illustrations by Al Hirschfeld. The story of the Algonquin Round Table.  This copy shows some wear and minor soiling to boards. Interior clean and binding still tight. A RARE ASSOCIATION… and a bit of New York History.

Bookseller Inventory # 24177

SOLD

The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table
Harriman, Margret Case

Publisher: Rinehart & Co., New York
Publication Date: 1951
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket
Edition: First edition
Book Type: Inscribed Association Copy

· Category: Sold ·

Lothar Baumgarten is a combination anthropologist, photographer, poet, storyteller, and installation maker. He has traveled in many a remote and outwardly inhospitable part of the world, aiming to live among its inhabitants as a concerned but invisible presence. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles commissioned Baumgarten to create a work that incorporated photo documentation. The focus was the artist’s research of the American railroad system. The work takes material form by integrating given structures into a complex whole and by creating a canon of references among individual, site-specific elements. — its tracks, bridges, signals, locomotives, rolling stock, stations, marshaling yards, logos, names and crossings on remote country roads. The photographs were later published along with eleven short stories in an artists’ book titled “Carbon.”

Deascription: Hard bound in dust jacket. 118 b&w and white color photographs. Published on the occasion of the Apr. 8 – Jun. 17, 1990 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles exhibition. INSCRIBED BY LOTHAR BAUMGARTEN in pencil on the limitation page ” For  H_ S_  21.7.93  N.Y.C  Lothar Baumgarten”.  Limited printing, 1 of 1750 copies. SIGNED Text pamphlet laid in at the rear.  Very minor wear to corners and edges of boards. Dust jacket shows wear , a few small chips and closed tears, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory# 22906

SOLD

Carbon
Baumgarten, Lothar

Publisher: Pentti Kouri / The Museum of Contemporary Art, L. A.
Publication Date: 1991
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Signed: inscribed by Photographer
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Aldo Sessa is undoubtedly the most recognized photographer in Argentina. Born in Buenos Aires in 1939, he started his long career of creative work drawing and painting at the “De Ridder” Atelier at the age of 10. He later specialized in graphic arts, design, and photography. His works are included in private collections and in museums in Argentina and around the world. He has performed more than 250 exhibitions and published 40 art books.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket. SIGNED IN BLACK PEN BY ALDO SESSA on the titlepage. 47 beautifully haunting and surreal full page photographs. A scarce signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory # 19217

SOLD 

· Category: Sold ·

Gerhard Richter has never committed himself to one artistic style. He began working with artists such as Sigmar Polke and Georg Baselitz. Their work, and Richter’s in particular, began to have an impact in Germany, and eventually international art circles. Richter’s beliefs are credited with refreshing art and rejuvenating painting as a medium during a period when many artists chose performance and ready-made media. Together with Polke and Fischer-Lueg, Richter formed a group called the Capitalist Realists. The Capitalist Realists were satirical, often deriving subject matter from print media. Richter began to see art as something that had to be separated from art history; he believed that paintings should focus on the image rather than the reference, the visual rather than the statement.

Description: 3 hard bound volumes with dust jackets in publishers slip case, as issued. Catalog Raisonné – Complete Works  Volume #1 Katalog der Ausstellung / Exhibition Catalogue, by Suzanne Page. Profusely illustrated in color and b&w. Published on the occasion of a travelling exhibition originating at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris September 23 – November 21, 1993. 195 pages with text in German, English & French. Volume #2 Texte, by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Peter Gidal and Birgit Pelzer. Interview with the artist. 112 pages with text in German only. Volume #3  Werkubersicht, Catalogue Raisonne 1962-1993, Catalogue Raisonne of works between 1962-1993. Biography, Solo and Group Exhibition history, Selected Texts., Selected Films, 234 pages with text in German, English & French. Some minor shelf wear to publishers slip case. Upper edge of slipcase with one small tear to paper, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory # 28219

SOLD

Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonne 1962-1993 (3 volumes)
Richter, Gerhard

Title: Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonne
Publisher: Edition Cantz, Germany
Publication Date: 1993
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Description: Hollywood East… New York’s “good life”… Shingle style, blue & white, Seagrass with coral and twig. Share the fantasy of the dream homes beyond the privet, presented through the eyes of 24 top designers. Hard bound in white cloth with white stamped letters to the spine and cover. Illustrated endpapers. Intro by Mayer Rus.  A beautiful survey of contemporary design in the Hamptons. Over 300 pages lavishly illustrated in full color!  Intro by Mayer Rus. Designers included: Jamie Drake, Thomas O’brien, Mark Zeff, Randy Kemper, Enrico Boetti & Dominic Kozerski, Thom Filicia, Kelly Graham, Jonathan Adler & Simon Doonan, Vicente Wolf and more. Minor wear to boards. Dust jacket shows somw sunning. Scuff and one small closed tear to upper spine edge of dust jacket, otherwise fine. Now out of print and exceedingly scarce!

Bookseller Inventory #23728

SOLD

Designing The Hamptons: Portraits Of Interiors
Rus, Mayer & Lind, Diana

Publisher:   Edizioni Press, New York
Publication Date:   2006
Binding:   Hard Bound
Book Condition:   Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition:   First Edition

· Category: 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 soiling to dust jacket. Very small damp stain to end pages, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 26906

SOLD

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

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

· Category: Sold ·

Collected from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, arguably the greatest collection of primitive art in the world. This book – six years in the making – was published on the occasion of the touring exhibition of the Barbier-Mueller collection, in association with the Dallas Museum of Fine Art and the L.A. County Museum of Art exhibitions.

Description:
Hard bound with dust jacket. 238 pages with 72 illustrations, and 39 full-page color plates. A scarce and sought after title on the extraordinary sculptural  art of the West African nation of Gabon. Text in English. One small tear to upper spine edge of dust jacket, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 20877

SOLD

Ancestral Art of Gabon: From the Collections of the Barbier-Mueller Museum
Perrois, Louis

Publisher: Barbier-Mueller Museum
Publication Date: 1985
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Dale Chihuly is now widely recognized as the world’s premier glass artist and has been the subject of many books, critical essays and PBS specials. Chihuly glass sculpture can be found in over 150 major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Louvre. In 1969 he established the Glass Department at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he taught until 1983. Chihuly now resides in his native Pacific Northwest where he continues to develop his own work at the Pilchuck Glass School, which he helped to found in 1971.

Description: A portfolio of 28 beautiful photos and drawings from Dale Chihuly’s experience in Finland in June 1995. Each measures approximately 12×20 inches and is printed on heavy paper stock, housed in a Chihuly hand decorated folding case. Chihuly decided to create his fantastic Chandeliers in the world’s great glass centers, and he began in the tiny village of Nuutajarvi, north of Helsinki. Working with the artisans of the Hackman factory, well known for its production of modernist designs, Chihuly and his American glassblowers created the first of fourteen Chandeliers that were to be installed in Venice the following year. This oversize portfolio documents that exuberant session. Photographs record the installations that temporarily transformed the Finnish landscape. Also included are reproductions of the drawings that inspired the glass works. Some very monor wear to case, otherwise fine, with each plate bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 18017

SOLD

Chihuly Over Venice Nuutajarvi, Finland Part 1, June 1995
Chihuly, Dale

Publisher: Portland Press
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Hardcover Portfolio
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition Folio

· Category: Sold ·

For more than four decades, Bruce Weber has been one of the most influential photographers in the world. He is widely known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Versace, as well as his work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines.

Description: Paperback copy. True first edition. This book is by far the most sought after Bruce Weber title! A richly produced oversize elephant folio with pictorial printed wrappers, Rio is packed with Weber’s distinctive photographs from fashion to the erotic, all printed in a variety of colors and duo tone. unpaginated – 130 plates, including several gate-folds, & with drawings by Richard Giglio. On the beach, in restaurants, at nightclubs, in their rooms, Weber’s subjects exude a beauty which is at the same time casual and self-possessed. Many of these photographs were shown in a major exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York, in September of 1986. Some edge wear to wrappers, and a few very small bumps to spine edge, otherwise a very nice copy. Interior clean and binding tight. Scarce!

SOLD

O Rio De Janeiro: A Photographic Journal
Weber, Bruce

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Soft cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: True First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue 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, and youthful writing career.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Red cloth boards with silver titles. Dust jacket art and b&w illustrations by Hal McIntosh. Wear to dust jacket and chipping to edges and corners. 312 pages. Interior clean and binding tight. Rare in dust jacket!

Bookseller Inventory # 24103SOLD

Uncle Dynamite
Wodehouse, P. G.

Publisher: Didier
Publication Date: 1948
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First U. S. Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Description: Hard bound in burgundy color silk over boards with gilt titles. Published on the occasion of the Thursday November 20, 1980 auction held at the Hotel Richemond, Geneva. Sale code “Polar Star”. 12 beautiful full page, full color plates. The star of the auction the “Polar Star” a 41.285 cts. cushion shaped diamond, once owned by Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte, and the Russian Princess Tatiana Youssoupoff. Later Acquired by Cartier’s Paris and sold to the oil magnate Sir Henry Deterding. A very nice copy of a scarce auction catalog.

Bookseller Inventory # 25038

SOLD

A Casket Of Magnificent Jewels:
The Collection Of The Late Lydia Deterding
Christie’s

Publisher: Christie’s; Geneva, Switzerland
Publication Date: Thursday November 20, 1980
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued

· Category: Sold ·

Since 1996 Black Cat Books has been buying and selling fine used books in their book shop, now located in the heart of Shelter Island, N.Y.  Stop by and browse over 20,000 fine and used titles, in all subject areas. From it’s inception, Black Cat Books has offered a well-chosen selection of titles for the reader and collector, presented in a relaxed and inviting atmosphere. The Black Cat is the a place to discover something new to read, one from your favorite author, or an out of print title you haven’t seen for years. An ever changing stock of vintage collectibles & signed first editions are presented in a well maintained and orderly shop. The second floor is now open, so please feel free to stop in and check it out. Our hours are 10-5 every day, other times by chance or appointment. The owner and book buyer Dawn Hedberg is always looking to find new and collectible books in all subject areas.

If you have books to sell please feel free to contact us to make an appointment for a house call.

(631) 725-8654

blackcatbooks@yahoo.com

Click the images to Link to Facebook & Instagram

· Category: About ·

Richard Avedon revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. He became internationally recognized for his photography during his long career at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Although Avedon first earned his reputation as a fashion photographer, his greatest achievement has been his reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture.  Avedon’s pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous. the portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops, with no props or extraneous details to distract from their person.

Description: Hard bound limited edition with pictoral boards, no dust jacket as issued. Published on the occasion of the November – December, 2001 exhibition. Folio measuring 12 x 15 inches. The Avedon images presented here, many for the first time, were made in Paris for Harper’s Bazaar during the 1950s. What is particularly special about this presentation is that the images are being reproduced to the exact scale of the engraver’s prints made for Avedon by the master printer Andre Gremola, and are uncropped, on their original mounts, with all of the artist’s notations on both front and back. Thus, they provide a remarkable portrait of the working methods of one of the most influential fashion photographers in history. OUT OF PRINT AND SOUGHT AFTER!

Bookseller Inventory # 26905

SOLD

Made in France
Thurman, Judith and Avedon, Richard

Publisher: Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Toni Morrison is a highly esteemed American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. She later developed the story as her first novel, The Bluest Eye. She wrote it while raising two children and teaching at Howard. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize. She has also worked as an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated First edition. Nobel Prize winner’s scarce first book. Grey boards with blue cloth spine, stamped in silver. First issue unclipped dust wrapper with $5.95 & 10/70 on front flap. Previous owners 479 written in blue ink to inside flap of jacket, otherwise with interior clean. Some very minor foxing to end pages and page edges. Very slight age toning to white dust wrapper, otherwise very good. Binding tight. The true first edition / first state of Morrison’s landmark book.

Bookseller Inventory# 26491

SOLD

The Bluest Eye
Morrison, Toni

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston
Publication Date: 1970
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Woody Allen is an Academy Award winning screenwriter & director, as well as an accomplished  jazz musician, author, actor and playwright. Woody Allen has won three Academy Awards and been nominated a total of 21 times! He has more screenwriting Academy Award nominations than any other writer. Best know for his known for his New York comedies, he as synonymous with Manhattan as yellow cabs and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated First Printing. Illustrated with black and white photographs. Front dust jacket flap has 10/67 on bottom right, and $4.50 price to upper edge. Bound in beige backed blue cloth bound boards. Woody Allen’s first published book, a play. Boards bright and clean. Some minor edge wear and age toning to dust jacket, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 26993

SOLD

Don’t Drink The Water
Allen, Woody

Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1967
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·