E-Catalogues

 

E-catalogue 100: Movable and Pop-up Books

E-catalogue 100: Movable and Pop-up Books

In presenting this list of new acquisitions in pop-ups and movables from a private collection, one is struck right away by the staying power of these marvels of paper engineering. What was created to provide visual entertainment in the pre-cinema age continues to find an audience in a world that is oversaturated in visual stimuli. From the peepshow, which commemorated landscapes and events in three dimensions in the 18th and 19th centuries, all the way up to modern practitioners, such as Edward Gorey, whose Tunnel Calamity shows how hard it is to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room; to the pop-up book, a format pioneered by 19th-century children’s book publishers like Dean and Sons and popularized in the 21st century by paper engineers like Robert Sabuda—the lineage that runs through this collection is like a thread that brings one of these paper sculptures to life.

 

E-catalogue 99: Lynd Ward

E-catalogue 99: Lynd Ward

For our 99th e-catalogue, we present a cross-section of Lynd Ward’s oeuvre from a small private collection. Those who have fallen under the spell Ward conjured from the dramatic interplay of light and dark in his wood engravings typically encounter it through the six wordless novels he published between 1929 and 1937. And yet, Ward illustrated more than 200 books over a half-century career. Ward imbued his spirit—the spirit of his age, of hope and resiliency, of grief and recognition—into each of his projects. As a collected corpus, such as that assembled here, they likewise portray the spirit of a life.

E-catalogue 98: New Acquisitions

E-catalogue 98: New Acquisitions

With the return of travel comes the expanded possibility for seeking out new treasures and pleasures to offer to our customers. The following list reflects the sort of variety we encountered in our search for the rare and the unusual.

E-catalogue 95: British Illustration, 1890-1930 (excluding Eric Gill)

E-catalogue 95: British Illustration, 1890-1930 (excluding Eric Gill)

In the language of images, there are common tongues that speak in words we know—shape, line, color—about what we cannot yet understand. The generation of British artists and illustrators working at the turn of the twentieth century through the interwar period achieved such a mastery. The likes of Arthur and Georgie Gaskin, Edward Burne-Jones, Kate Greenaway, and Paul Nash drew upon the heavy lore and artistic heritage of the British Isles, the hope of the new millennium, and the grief of war after war after war. The romance of their illustrations, from Burne-Jones’s sensitive work for the Kelmscott Chaucer, exemplified in proofed and published leaves presented here, to Gaskin’s familiar countryside vistas and intimate portraits, sends pangs of longing across time to the viewer today. In this catalogue, we invite you to explore the detail and devotion with which they translated the world, and find in it both comfort and fascination.

E-catalogue 87: Sing the Body Electric

E-catalogue 87: Sing the Body Electric

The bridge between the book and the human body traverses language and feeling. We describe backs as supple, heads and feet as sure or firm, a lip as stained or rough. Is it any wonder that a poetry of words so readily can meet the poetry of the body? Our current e-catalog embraces that intimate and inimitable connection that brings a vocabulary to the shape of ourselves. 

E-catalogue 86: Back to Basics

E-catalogue 86: Back to Basics

What is an alphabet but one of the essential building blocks of language, and thus, of the stories that serve as the backbone of culture? From our first formative educational experience to the intricacies of letterform and design, our mastery of our ABCs shapes how we experience the world during our time in it. We have therefore gathered a selection of material that speaks to this broad range of influence. From 19th century illustrated primers, to Edward Gorey’s Gashleycrumb Tinies; from Vespasiano Amphiareo’s writing manual, to the jewel-like calligraphy in Melissa Sweet’s Garden Companion, we see just how well-traveled these characters are.
E-catalogue 82: Eric Gill and his Circle

E-catalogue 82: Eric Gill and his Circle

The subject of this e-catalogue is the examination of Eric Gill's considerable talents in the book arts. From his work for Count Kessler at the Cranach Press and Robert Gibbings at the Golden Cockerel Press, to the small communities he formed at Ditchling with Hilary Pepler, Gill's prolific output was enduring and his influence on future artists immense. His biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, concludes that he was “a most extraordinary person,” which dovetails perfectly with something Gill himself wrote in 1934: “Art itself has become an extraordinary thing—the activity of peculiar people—people who become more and more peculiar as their activity becomes more and more extraordinary.”

E-catalogue 81: Books-about-Books

E-catalogue 81: Books-about-Books

We close out our series of lists featuring books-about-books with a nod to the self-referential nature that these works tend to take. The preservation of stories about printing, typography, bookbinding, and book collecting lies at the core of this selection, covering a variety of bookish worlds, from the booksellers imagined in Henry Morris’s San Serriffe, to the Typestickers of Los Angeles. The high level of production also befits the texts they contain: consider George Parker Winship’s address on William Caxton, delivered to the Club of Odd Volumes in 1908 and printed at the Doves Press; or the indulgently extravagant entrée into the world of books and book collecting that is The Colophon—available here as a nearly complete run and with the first part in original slipcases.