At Bromer Booksellers, we focus on the visual book, with fine images that both enhance narrative and stand alone as independent creations. Among our holdings in this area are costume books, emblem books, examples from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, the fantasy illustrators in the tradition of Arthur Rackham, and modern books with original graphics. We look for the successful fusion of picture with text from any century, any country, and across a variety of artistic movements and media. We are especially fascinated with books of other cultures, and you will occasionally find items such as Japanese illustrated woodblock books and Eskimo tales without words ...
Read more about Illustrated Books
Chicago: Sherwin Beach Press, 1993. Oblong octavo. 21pp. One of 200 copies. Four photographs by Mike Tappin depict people living on insubstantial government funds, the “safety net.” The text by Steve Bogira, originally published in 1983 in the Chicago Reader, details the lives of those hovering at the poverty line..... More
Magog [Quebec]: Guylaine Couture, 2021. Small octavo. (11)pp., accordionfold. Unique, signed by the artist, Guylaine Couture. Based on data collected by the United Nations Refugee Agency and various national surveys taken in India, Australia, France, the United States, and other countries, m2 visualizes global disparities in housing and the rippling..... More
Los Angeles: Bruce McCallister, 1931. Quarto. (x), (ii)pp., + 14 plates. One of 500 copies, signed by Landacre. Foreword by Arthur Miller. Published during a period that saw a renaissance in woodcuts and wood engravings, this marks Landacre's first original publication. Originally from Ohio, Landacre discovered the beauty of the..... More
Bellamar, Cuba: Ediciones El Fortín, 2014. Octavo. (10)pp. One of fifty copies. An artist’s book of multi-dimensional, tactile design, layering organic materials, transparent sheets, and tipped-in pages to explore the Jewish-Latin identities of its authors. Illustrations include paper collage, calligraphy, and hand-colored printed drawings, which fold out to reveal scenes..... More
Santa Cruz, CA: Moving Parts Press, (1991). Quarto. (44)pp. One of 70 copies, signed by the author, Francisco X. Alarcón. Forty pen-and-ink drawings by Ray Rice, in his second collaboration with his daughter, Felicia Rice, printer and proprietor of Moving Parts Press, are at once abstract, fractural, and familiar. Literally..... More
Iowa City: Poinciana Paper Press, 2018. Oblong 16mo. 192pp. One of twenty-five copies, signed by the artist. Printed in black, red, brown, and yellow, Famer's book is a shapeshifter, designed to disrupt the teleological assumptions put forth by colonizers and colonial historians of the Caribbean. She blends her own poetic..... More
(Providence, RI): RISD, 2015. Octavo. (11)ff. Unique. Signed by the artist. Ten photopolymer plates depict, in a hazy brown palette, gruesome photos of unidentified female bodies found on the outskirts of the border town Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The images' abstractness evokes the frightening yet fascinating intermingling of life and death;..... More
Matanzas, Cuba: Ediciones Vigía, 2013. Octavo. 59pp. One of 200 copies. Nancy Balboa’s illustrations celebrate Cuba’s agriculture, and draw a parallel between its grassroots rural life and its heritage of grassroots revolution. Martí, considered by many the “patron saint” of Cuba, was at the forefront of such organic, popular activism..... More
Color lithograph measuring 12 by 9 1/2 inches by Marie Laurencin, a contemporary of Picasso and Braque. Although she was one of a few women artists of the time to experiment with Cubist ideas, her work does not reach the height of abstraction attained by Picasso. Instead, her focus is..... More
Vancouver: Heavenly Monkey, 2018. Quarto. 63, (ii)pp. One of twenty-five copies (Series 3). With two leaves tipped in, one originating from George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient & Moderne (London, 1635), and the other from the Nucleus Emblematum Selectissimorum of Gabriel Rollenhagen. This expansion on the leaf-book motif provides..... More
![Kak Rubanok Sdelal Rubanok : Skazka [How a Plane Made a Plane : A Fairy Tale]. Samuil Marshak](/pictures/thumb/27525.JPG?v=1630529842)
Leningrad: Raduga, 1927. Small quarto. (12)pp. Bright color illustrations throughout. A rhyming Russian story for children, in which a worn-out old carpenter's plane makes a new plane, his "grandson," to carry on his work. The plane is aided in his work by fellow woodworking tools like the chisel, mallet, and..... More
(Rochester, NY): Leopard Studio Editions, 2014. (24)pp., accordion-fold, with two four-page inserts sewn in. One of five copies, signed and numbered by the artist. A miniature artist's book by Sue Huggins Leopard based on the poem by Emily Dickinson, which reads: "Love is anterior to life, / Posterior to death..... More
(N.p.): Limited Editions Club, (1998). Oblong folio. (26)ff. One of 300 copies. Signed by the photographer Edward Ranney. Illustrated with ten superb photographs of Macchu Picchu by Ranney, recreated as gravure plates by Jon Goodman of Hadley, MA. Printed at Dan Carr and Julia Ferrari's Golgonooza Letter Foundry and Press..... More
Paris: Fernand Mourlot, (1975). Elephant folio. (38)ff. One of 150 copies. Contains ten lithographs measuring 28 1/2 by 20 3/4 inches, each signed by the artist, Richard Lindner, and numbered and counter-initialed by Fernand Mourlot, the printer/publisher who produced the lithographs. In his introduction, Ionesco describes Lindner as "one of..... More
Brisbane: Locks' Press, 1979. Folio. (10)ff. One of 60 copies, signed by illustrator and Locks' Press co-founder Margaret Lock. Eight black & white engravings accompany Lear's nonsense poem about a man who has his toes stolen (possibly by mermaids) while swimming across the Bristol Channel. This is the first book..... More
Brisbane: Locks' Press, 1983. Small quarto. 9ff., + 11 plates mounted on stubs, 3 of which are folding. One of thirty copies. Illustrated with thirteen etchings by Mona Ryder, a sculptor-turned-printmaker, who studied with Margaret Lock. In keeping with the Locks' ambition to rescue "unjustly neglected" texts, this book revives..... More
(Columbus, OH): Logan Elm Press, 1990. Quarto. (38)pp. One of 115 copies, printed on handmade paper and signed by the poet, David Citino, the artist, Anthony Rice, and the designer of the book, Robert Tauber. A stunning production crafted in advance of the quincentennial celebration of Columbus’s voyage. Illustrated throughout..... More
Columbus, OH: Logan Elm Press, 2010. Folio. (151)pp. One of twenty-six copies, signed by the contributors below the colophon. Each of the twelve chapters begins with a drypoint monoprint menu, drawn and painted by Anthony H. Rice, with calligraphy by Andy Barkus, followed by a six-line initial by Ann Alaïa..... More
(1860). Handscroll. An elegant makimono-e painting in sumi ink and color wash on paper by 83-year-old artist Toshin. Handscrolls are meant to be viewed right to left in sections, traveling arms-length by arms-length through the continuous landscape. This painting takes the viewer through each of the four seasons in a...... More
(United States): 1867. Small octavo. (8)pp. A handwritten alphabet, skillfully and whimsically decorated with pen-and-ink drawings for each letter. The introductory page cites the work as a gift from a father, likely a recent immigrant from a German-speaking country, to his young son on the occasion of his Namenstage, or..... More
London: Clover Hill Editions, 1985. Oblong 32mo. (32)ff. From an edition of 375 copies, this is one of 75 on handmade Barcham Green paper, signed by the artist, and with an extra suite of the wood-engravings printed on Gampi Japon. An alphabetical accounting of the diets of various creatures, from..... More
New Britain, CT: Robert E. Massmann, 1979. (15)pp. One of 250 copies. Inscribed by Massman at the front flyleaf. A collection of "tiny charmers" of Massman's design. The bookplates are printed largely in brown, but one of a cardinal perched on an evergreen tree is in color. Bound in green..... More
New Britain, CT: Art Press, 1978. Two volumes bound dos-a-dos. 38; 34pp. One of 250 copies. The first volume contains the bibliography, while the second contains selected illustrations that had been drawn for REM miniatures, most of which are hand-colored by Eloise and Robert Massmann. Bound in brown leatherette with..... More
New Britain, CT: Robert E. Massmann, 1983. (36)pp. One of 300 copies. Inscribed by Robert Massmann facing the half title. A satirical work of dubious-at-best librarian wisdom, with colored illustrations of the resulting five recommendations. Bound in full burgundy leather with paper label to upper cover. Fine in red paper..... More
Cambridge, MA: Bow & Arrow Press, 1993. Small quarto. (iv), 16pp. Deluxe edition, one of fifty copies, signed by the author, Melinda Marble, and artist, Michael Mazur, and with two original drypoint etchings. This first book by Marble is the haunting tale of a girl troubled by her origins, and..... More
