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 ...
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(San Francisco: 2010). Quarto. 10ff. Original calligraphic manuscript by Ingmire of the text from a section of Paz’s poem “Blanco.” This poem, which was published in 1967, has been linked to Paz’s time in India, and it can be read as a figurative exploration of Indian religious philosophy. “The spirit.....
London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Elephant folio. xvi, 44pp., + 50 facsimile drawings. One of 500 copies. A keen catalogue and academic exposition on Canaletto's corpus, cleverly blending biography and art criticism. Booklet bound in full brown cloth, gilt stamped. With portfolio housed in brown Solander box backed in brown morocco. Fine.
NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1866. Octavo. (v)ff., 192pp. First edition, second issue. With forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel. Carroll’s enduring tale of a child’s dreamworld was first issued in 1865 by Macmillan and Company of London, but Carroll and Tenniel were unhappy with the print quality of the illustrations.....
Rome: Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, 1898. Oblong octavo. (60)pp. One of 200 copies. Illustrated with seventeen chromolithographed plates, which accompany a series of musical arrangements by Salvatore Saya, with lyrics by the Italian poet Ugo Fleres. Together with twenty-one of Giuseppe Cellini’s original watercolor and ink drawings for Calendario dell’Anno.....
1977. A delightful 15 by 11-inch painting of a large gnarled tree, its branches forming a leafy canopy over a portion of meadow grown thick with green grasses and pink thistle. The tree is painted with a wooden sign nailed crookedly to its trunk, bearing the artist's signature and date...
London: Simpkin, Marshall and Son, (c. 1865). 32mo. 30pp. Illustrated throughout with detailed wood engravings depicting creatures for each letter of the alphabet, from the Welsh goat and hare to the yellow-hammer bird and zebra, as well as a frontispiece of a spaniel and a decorative tailpiece. Each animal is...
Concord, NH: Boyd & White, 1839. 16mo. 16pp. Illustrated with numerous woodcuts throughout. The title page notes that this is the fourth number in the seventh series; the previous year, the Riddler was in the sixth series, suggesting that this was an annual. Although many of the riddles were likely...
Boston: Taggard & Thompson, 1858. 16mo. 31pp. Nine full-page color engravings, illustrating key scene's in the titular fox's antics in his journey to find food for his family. He finds a farm, confounds the animals, and captures a goose, only to again resort to his cunning ways to escape the...
(Indianapolis): Bobbs Merrill, (1911). Small quarto. First edition. Illustrated with reproductions of drawings by Howard Chandler Christy, an American illustrator best known for his patriotic portraits of military men and romantic depictions of society women. The illustrations accompany a story in verse by the American poet James Whitcomb Riley. The...
(Denmark: c. 1947-1960). All 16mo. 8-12pp. each. A collection of forty-seven promotional booklets for films based on books. Produced exclusively in Denmark and printed in Danish, these booklets were for sale outside movie theaters—the booklet for "Baby Doll" even has a ticket stub laid in, and the one for "On.....
Surrey: Circle Press, 1978. Folio. 58pp. One of 250 copies initialed by the artist. With fourteen full-page, brilliantly colored silk screens based loosely upon African masks. An extra initialed print is laid-in, this being marked III for The Squire. A fine copy in dark blue cloth boards and slipcase, which...
Surrey: Circle Press, 1979. Folio. 11 unbound folios. One of 300 copies, signed by the author, Christopher Logue, and the artist, John Christie. Each folio is designed with the number of the poem or the title printed in red on the first recto, where the poem begins and runs through...
Florence: Felice Paggi, 1883. Small octavo. 236pp., + iipp. of advertisements. First edition. The enduring children’s classic about a mischievous marionette whose nose grows every time he tells a lie, in the original Italian and wonderfully illustrated with a full-page frontispiece of the titular character, as well as sixty-one additional...
(England: c. 1825-1835). (4)pp., + 8ff. Original manuscript set of costume overlays depicting the evolution of a "Youth just ceased to grow" into a "Dandy quite complete." The Youth's ambition is to be a "Beau," and in each successive overlay, he puts on more of the trappings of dandyism until...
(France / China: c. 1900). Octavo. (22)pp. Album of Chinese landscapes in original watercolors, facing depictions of women's antique costumes painted on silk, interleaved with tissue. "Chinoiserie" refers to European art characterized by imagery of a romanticized China, a notion that similarly underpins the genre of costume books, which presented...
London: Ernest Benn, 1928. Quarto. (xvi), (144)pp., + 111 plates. First edition. One of twenty-five copies printed on handmade paper, specially bound, and with two color plates not included in the regular edition. Illustrated with plates in black & white and color, and with numerous text figures. A collection of...
NY: Century Co., (c. 1933). Octavo. (x), 246pp. Copiously illustrated by Palmer Cox. This was the first adventure of the Brownies written in prose, and it is advertised as having "a detailed, connected story, with a beginning, a middle and an end." A later issue, with the text, binding, and...
NY: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1972. Folio. 202, (5)pp. Publisher's facsimile of the famed edition of Hamlet issued by the Cranach Press in 1929. With reprints of Edward Johnston's typography, Edward Gordon Craig's 74 woodcuts, and Eric Gill's contributions of two initials, the title over the first woodcut, and spine titling...
(Dublin): Dolmen Press, 1954. Tall octavo. 32pp. One of 225 copies. Printed in black with red initials and with a decorative title-page spread, two full-page illustrations, and six pictorial headpieces by Mia Cranwill. The tragic myth of Deirdre and the sons of Usnech, who were slain by the jealous Conchobor...
London: Bentley, 1840, 1842, 1847. Three octavo volumes. viii, 338; ix, 288; viii, 364 pp. First edition. Illustrated with engravings by George Cruikshank and John Leech. Aside from very light splitting to extremities of outer hinges, this is a nearly fine, handsome set bound by Riviere in full polished tan calf, gilt. T.e.g. Bookplates.
Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de la Jeunesse, (1890). Small quarto. (14)pp., including paste-down endpapers. A stencil-colored cut-figure book, with each page cut into three sections so that one can make numerous combinations of the head, body, and legs of "Mon Oncle Gaspard." The Gaspards range in profession and character, from a....
(Chicago): The Compulsive Printer, 1977. Octavo. (30)ff. From an edition of 75 copies signed by the artist, Joseph D'Ambrosio, and the printer, Elmore Mundell, this is one of twenty-five with an extra signed serigraph and deluxe binding. The text is James Joyce's take on Aesop's "The Fox and the Grapes."...
Fullerton, CA: Stone & Lorson, 1988. Folio. iv, 9ff. One of 50 copies designed and bound by Joseph D'Ambrosio, and signed by him, Carolyn Johnson, and Carmen Voss, the hand-colorist. This twentieth-century leaf book contains an original leaf from a portfolio edition of John R. Wise's poem "The First of...
Seattle: Grey Spider Press, 1992. Oblong octavo. (26)ff. One of 75 copies, signed by the artist, Michael Dal Cerro. An illustrated alphabet, with woodcuts by Dal Cerro. The words and images chosen are nature-themed and carry a strong environmentalist message. Printed and bound by Chris Stern in green cloth, with...
(Albany: Print Club of Albany), 1989. Broadside measuring 15 by 19 inches. One of 100 copies, signed by the artist. The Print Club of Albany's Annual Print for 1988-1989, it's 55th Presentation Print. This lithograph is the last of a series of prints by Dallman that explores industrial and residential...
