Friday, May 31, 2013

Judy Garland Spots James Mason In Rare 1805 Book

by Stephen J. Gertz


The original, unsigned and undated, artwork for a series of satirical prints, Symptoms of Drilling, signed on the published prints as  "Designed & Etched by H.B.H. Esq. 1805" without imprint, recently fell into my lap. Bound by Riviere and Son c. 1900 - incredibly with misspelled title, "Symptons," on the upper cover - it was from the collection of the great film  director, George Cukor, and bears his celebrated bookplate designed by Paul Landacre.

Bookplate by Paul Landacre.
"For George / I came across this book & spotted James Mason. Judy"

It was a gift to Cukor from Judy Garland, inscribed, "For George/ I ran across this book & spotted James Mason / Judy." The book was likely presented and the message likely written c. 1953-54, the years that Cukor's production of Garland's star-vehicle, A Star Is Born, co-starring Mason, was shot and released. 

Symptoms of Drilling / Fall in Gentlemen!- heads up! - eyes right!
Ready! -p'sent! - wait Gentlemen, wait for the Word "Fire!"

The watercolors, in a style similar to Thomas Rowlandson, depict a motley crew of comical recruits engaged in soldier's training under the direction of a drill sergeant. The captions have been added by hand in the sky above the heads of the recruits. A bookseller's description tipped to the front endpaper mistakenly attributes them to Rowlandson but the only surviving copies of the published prints, at the British Museum (incomplete set) and Brown University (complete set), bear the signature and date at noted above.

Shoulder Arms.

It remains unknown who "H.B.H." or "H, H.B." is, and the published album is unrecorded by Tooley or Abbey.

March!!!- Cock-up there!
To the Right - face!

The series might well have been titled, "1st Division, Wildly Divided, Amateur Army... Chaos on the March!!!" If someone looking like James Mason is part of this platoon of British Gomer Pyles I don't see him. Miss Garland was clearly poking fun at the British actor who, in A Star Is Born, portrays washed-up movie star, Norman Maine, to Judy Garland's rising star, Esther Blodgett / Vicki Lester, the two in a heartfelt yet disastrous marriage.

Authentic Judy Garland autograph material is difficult to come by - studio publicists routinely signed still photographs - and her signature mutated over the years, her autograph from the 1930s - 1940s quite distinct from later examples. As odd as her signature appears here in contrast to earlier ones there is little doubt that this inscription is genuine. Why would someone make the  effort to deceive with this obscure, one-off album, and why would it be in George Cukor's possession? 

Had she remained in character the inscription would have been tear-stained and signed, "Mrs. Norman Maine," how Vicki Lester accepted her Academy Award after dearly beloved husband Norman Maine took a long walk off a short pier and journeyed into the drink for a final, dramatic exit stage-right to continue his full-time drinking into eternity.
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[H.B.H. or H., H.B.]. Symptoms of Drilling. N.p.: n.p., n.d. [1805]. Oblong octavo (5¾ x 16¾ in; 145 x 427 mm). A set of five original watercolor illustrations folded in two.

1. Symptoms of Drilling. Fall in Gentlemen!- heads up! - eyes right!
2. To the Right - face!
3.  March!!!- Cock-up there!
4.  Shoulder Arms
5.  Ready! -p'sent! - wait Gentlemen, wait for the Word "Fire!" 
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Thursday, May 30, 2013

The Small Press / Mimeograph Revolution 1940s - 1970s

by Stephen J. Gertz

Jim Schock. Life is a Lousy Drag.
Unicorn Publishing, Co., 1959.

A remarkable research collection of small press magazines and other printed matter representing the growth and proliferation of avant-garde and small press publications, often mimeographed, has come to market via Granary Books in New York.

The Outsider, no. 1. 1961.
Jon Edgar Webb, ed.
Complete run.

The collection is based upon (but not limited to) A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, the New York Public Library's acclaimed 1998 exhibition and catalog that explored the explosive and fertile period of intense innovation and experimentation in American literature and publishing that occurred below the mainstream's radar during the 1940s - 1970s.

The Insect Trust Gazette, no. 3. 1968.
Robert Basara, Leonard Belasco, Jed Irwin, William Levy, eds.
Collection includes nos. 1, 3.
Merlin, no. 1. Spring 1952.
Alexander Trocchi, ed.
Collection includes vol. 1, nos. 1–3, vol. 2, nos. 1, 3.

The individual - a reclusive New Jersey inventor - who amassed the collection joyfully suffered from that dreaded of all maladies, libri legendi aegritudinis, the book collector's disease: he "became obsessed with the secretive nature of the world contained in the exhibition's catalog."  He used the catalog as a guide and thus put together a singular library, one that he augmented with important ancillary material focusing on the West Coast scene.

The Illiterati, no. 4. Summer 1945.
Kermit Sheets and Kemper Nomland, eds.
The Digger Papers. [1968].
24 pp. Published by Paul Krassner.

The Beat Generation, Counterculture, New York School, Venice West, San Francisco Renaissance, Wichita Vortex, Black Mountain, Mavericks, Hippies, Diggers, and related manifestations of the swirling undercurrent of creativity of the era are all represented in the collection, which includes complete runs and significant examples of Angel Hair, Beatitude, Big Table, Black Mountain Review, C, Caterpillar, Fuck You, Gnaoua, Grist, The Hasty Papers, Insect Trust Gazette, J, Kulchur, Locus Solus, Matter, Measure, Miscellaneous Man, Merlin, Mother, Now, Open Space, The Outsider, Pacific Nation, Poems from the Floating World, Renaissance, San Francisco Earthquake, Set, Some/thing, Tree, Trobar, Whe're/, and Yugen.

[Wallace Berman]. Frammis.
Jack Hirschman and Jack Mueller, eds.
Published by Artaud’s Elbow, Berkeley, 1979.
Edward Leedskalnin. A Book in Every Home:
Containing Three Subjects: Ed’s Sweet Sixteen,
Domestic and Political Views.
Self-published, 1936.

Edward Leedskalnin was born January 12, 1887, in Latvia.
At 26 he was engaged to wed a girl 10 years younger whom
he called his "Sweet Sixteen." She broke off the engagement
the night before their wedding and, brokenhearted,
he moved to North America.

Around 1919 he purchased a small piece of land in
Florida City and over the next 28 years constructed
(and lived in) a massive coral monument dedicated
to his "Sweet Sixteen" called "Rock Gate Park."
Working alone at night, Leedskalnin eventually dug
up and sculpted over 1,100 tons of coral into a monument
that would later be known as the Coral Castle.
He would often be asked how he was able to move such
huge boulders and replied:
"I know the secrets of the people who built the pyramids
(being those at the site at Giza in Egypt)."

A Book in Every Home is the longest of Leedskalnin's books
and is a treatise on moral education. He also wrote theories
on magnetism and electricity, including what he called the
“Perpetual Motion Holder.” He went to the grave
refusing to reveal his secret knowledge of the Egyptians.

The '60s West Coast scene is represented by samples of The San Francisco Oracle, The Southern California Oracle, Communications Company (the publishing arm of the Diggers); items relating to the explosive San Francisco music scene including a collection of handbills and postcards from Family Dog and others; newspapers and magazines of radical politics such as The Berkeley Barb, Ramparts, The Realist; uncommon pre-zine self-published journals of offbeat commentary such as Horseshit and Jack Green's Newspaper; and a wide assortment of pamphlets, magazines and diverse additional obscure and rarely seen publications from the period.

Gnaoua, no. 1. Spring 1964.
Ira Cohen, ed.
Sole issue, no. 1]
Measure, no. 2. Winter 1958.
John Wieners, ed.
Collection includes nos. 1–2.

The writers, artists, and photographers who contributed to these magazines include a who's who of  American (and, to a lesser degree, European) arts and letters in the second half of the twentieth century,  the wrecking crew whose adventures and experiments upset the status quo and built the foundation for a new American post-War culture, a once alternative fraternity now in the mainstream of Postmodern America with a degree of acceptance that they could never have imagined, once outside, now venerated, 21st century insiders:

Now Now. 1965.
Charles Plymell, ed.
Collection includes nos. 1–2.

Robert Duncan, Kenneth Patchen, Denise Levertov, Alex Comfort, William Everson, William Burford, Alexander Trocchi, Christopher Logue, Patrick Brangwyn, Alfred Chester, H. Charles Hatcher, James Fidler, Patrick Bowles, Richard Seaver, A.J. Ayer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, Robert Creeley, Jack Kerouac, Edward Dahlberg, William S. Burroughs, Gilbert Sorrentino, Lenore Kandel, ruth weiss, Philip Lamantia, Gregory Corso Richard Brautigan, Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan, Andy Warhol, Gerald Malanga, Frank O'Hara, John Thomas, Charles Bukowski, Neal Cassady, George Bataille, Ed Ruscha, Antonin Artaud, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, Michael McClure, Bruce Connor, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Bruce Connor, Wallace Berman, Dennis Hopper, Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, V.R. (Bunny) Lang, Leroi Jones, Alfred Jarry, Peter Berg, Emmett Grogan, and Paul Krassner.
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All images courtesy of Granary Books, currently offering this collection, with our thanks. Inquiries can be made here.
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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Three Visually Arresting Modernist Judaica Posters

by Stephen J. Gertz

Designer Unknown.
"M". c. 1931.

We revisit the Swann Galleries Modernist Poster sale held May 13, 2013.

The linocut poster above is for the original release of film director Fritz Lang's "M" at the Moghrabi Theatre (built in 1930) in Tel Aviv.

After a distinguished career during the silent film era, Lang's first talkie - considered to be his best film - starred Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, a hunted, haunted by "this evil thing inside me" child murderer who whistles Grieg's ominous In the Hall of the Mountain King when approaching his prey. 

Due to the lurid nature of film's subject matter Lang, who had made his films at the celebrated and artistically influential German studio, UFA (Universum Film AG), worked with Nero Films for this movie to deflect the political pressure bearing down upon him from UFA, a government-supported entity. When sound arrived UFA routinely released versions of major films in several languages. Given that Jews were  persecuted in Germany soon after the movie's release and, later, exterminated wherever Nazis found them, it is fascinating to learn that UFA felt the need to release a version in Hebrew to cater to the audience in then Palestine. It was strictly a financial decision. With the advent of sound movies and language barriers the studio could no longer depend on easy distribution and box-office receipts throughout the world.

Designer unknown.

This same, stark image of a hand, emblazoned with a red "M," appeared on the original German poster but did not have the repeating motif of the letter against the background.

Abram Games (1914-1996).
Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry. 1945.

As a Jew who had been exposed to Nazi atrocities through British war films, Abram Games (1914-1996) was in a unique position to be able to channel his horror in a manner which could potentially assist the decimated Jewish communities of Europe. His Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry (1945) starkly and dramatically captures the desperate plight of concentration camp survivors. (Abram Games: His Life and Work, fig 219).

Abram Games, one of the twentieth century's most influential British graphic designers, believed in using the simplest possible design to create the greatest possible impact.

Beginning as a commercial artist, when WWII broke out he was recruited as an Official War Artist and in that capacity designed over a hundred posters, later creating the symbols of the BBC and the Festival of Britain.

He experimented with "unusual juxtapositions of illustration and typography. Games strove to ensure that his wartime posters were as striking and seductive as the best commercial art.

The "Blonde Bombshell."

"Sometimes Games’ work was deemed too seductive, notably the glamorous ATS girl dubbed the 'Blonde Bombshell' which was criticized by the House of Commons for being too glamorous. Games favored stark, simple and, therefore, all the more arresting images produced by sticking to his philosophy of deriving 'maximum meaning' from 'minimum means'" (Design Museum).

Abram Games (1914-1996)
DP / Over 200,000 Displaced Jews Look To You. 1946.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Games designed "posters which demanded, rather than appealed to, the Jewish public to give aid to the refugees . . . [In Displaced Persons] two eyes stare out of the initials DP with an appalling urgency; the vestige of a face an embodiment of despair. The lettering underneath . . . is by contrast plain and tiny: no words are really necessary. This is Games at his most powerful" (Abram Games: His Life and Work, p. 177, and fig. 220).  

“All Abram Games’ designs were recognizably his own. They had vigor, imagination, passion and individuality...And he was lucky - and clever - in contriving, over a long and creative working life, to keep on doing what he did best” (David Gentleman).
 
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Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

William Burroughs' Intro To Naked Lunch At $175,000

by Stephen J. Gertz


Calling Dr. Benway:

The first and final draft corrected typescripts of William S. Burroughs' Introduction to the first American edition (NY: Grove Press, 1962) of Naked Lunch (Paris: Olympia Press, 1959), his seminal, controversial work and one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature, have come to market. The asking price is $175,000.

From the collection of his friend and editor, Alan Ansen, they are being offered by Glenn Horowitz, Bookseller, the New York City dealer who has made a habit of pulling literary rabbits out of his hat. Within that context these typescripts may be fairly ranked as the rabbit who ate Cleveland.

The first, titled "Postscript" in Burroughs' penciled holograph, is comprised of five recto-only leaves corrected by Burroughs in black ink, with page numbers in same. It is unknown when, exactly, he wrote it but it appears to be c. 1960.

The heavily corrected typescript is Burroughs' first pass at his extended essay, Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness, that would serve as the introduction to the American edition of Naked Lunch. “Postscript” discursively explores the themes and sentiments which motivated Burroughs to write the introduction; it is the text upon which the polished, buffed, and published version was based. 


Bits and pieces of “Postscript” can be found throughout “Deposition,” as well as in its final post-postscript, and the relationship between “Postscript” and the published introduction is immediately obvious. For example, page one of the “Postscript” typescript includes the following notes:

"Hasheiesh [sic], Mescaline, LSD -- ? under the title what is? Who must have junk to live in the structure? When there are no addicts carriers will disintegrate - virus opium."

"Talk exact manner in which junk virus controls words in monkey considered sacred by those who purpose to keep the virus of numbers or remove the bottom number street to cover basic frequency."

The published introduction directly addresses the points noted above, concerning the difference between hallucinogens - hashish, mescaline, LSD  - and heroin. Burroughs writes in part, “There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other Narcotic departments...” The introduction also sets forth upon “the exact manner in which the junk virus operates.” 

Within the five-page “Postscript” is a handful of dialogue and a paragraph referring to “Mr Bradly Mr Martin,” a character appearing in the novels of Burroughs' Nova Trilogy: Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket that Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). In part, they read:

“Light in eyes and I saw the brains...no time to stop and eat switch fuzz behind me...I told him I'd do it I told him if I catch you on the West Side push you on the tracks...hustle your own mooch...”

"And he looked at me over the blade caught the tarnish black and white subway dawn..Old photo..Couldn't reach me with the knife and fell on the tracks I told him he would and he rushed for I – overcoat I held there teaching him the cloth in the turnstile and learned the cloth stuck there like star fish smoking and switch fuzz whistling down the iron stairs and I caught an uptown cold sore…"

"Mr Bradly Mr Martin teaching him the cloth in the junk hold saw the brains fuzz the rail…"


Neither the dialogue nor the narrative made it into the Introduction and appear to be unpublished.


The final draft appears in three typescripts:

• “Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected ribbon typescript of thirteen recto-only leaves (including the one-page “PSS or PPS” noted below), with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in blue ink and copy-editing notes in red ink.

•“Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected carbon typescript of eleven recto-only leaves (lacking final page) very neatly incorporating in another hand the changes to the ribbon typescript above, either by erasing the type and replacing it with the correct text or interlined with Burroughs’ text.

• “PSS or PPS.” (ca. 1960), a one-leaf corrected ribbon typescript with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in black ink. It is stapled to “Deposition” above. 


These are a ribbon typescript and carbon copy of Burroughs’ introduction, "Deposition,” as published by Grove Press. The thirteen-page typescript is corrected by Burroughs and his changes are incorporated into the carbon copy as well as the final text as published. Burroughs’ holograph annotations include clarifications to language, e.g., “these notes” becomes “the notes which have now been published,” “measurable” becomes “accurately measurable,” etc., and include corrections to spelling and changes in emphasis with the addition of underlining.

The one-page “PSS or PPS” was not included in the book but did appear with “Deposition” in Grove Press' Evergreen Review (Volume 4, Issues 11-12). It was introduced “as a late post-postscript - a newspeak précis.”

Alan Ansen ("Rollo Greb" in Kerouac's On the Road) was a poet, playwright, and close friend of many Beat Generation writers. Living in Tangier, he spent time with Paul Bowles, Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others. He lived in Greece during the last forty or so years of his life

Considered to be the only man capable of shaping the hundreds of random pages generated by Burroughs into publishable form, Ansen was brought in by Ginsberg to help edit Naked Lunch. He later preserved the Ginsberg-Burroughs correspondence along with many of the photographs from the period.

To have fresh Burroughs autograph/typescript material enter the marketplace (ABPC records no Burroughs typescript/manuscript material coming to auction within the last thirty-six years) at this late date is somewhat miraculous; all that could be found had, it seemed, been unearthed. But that was before The Amazing Horowitz waved his magic wand, said "abracadabra," and conjured this material out of nowhere and into and out of his hat.

• • •

And now, a treat: Burroughs recites passages concerning Dr. Benway - the Marcus Welby, M.D. from Hell who "performs appendectomies with a rusty sardine can" - from Naked Lunch in his deadpan nasal monotone mashed-up with footage from an episode of Dr. Kildare, and behold! Burroughs' voice coming out of Richard Chamberlain's mouth. Oh, to hear Burroughs croon Three Stars Will Shine Tonight, the 1961 TV show's hit theme song.


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All images courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller with our thanks.
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Thursday, May 23, 2013

The Girl & The Faun, A Bookbinder, And Citizen Hearst's Last Word

by Stephen J. Gertz


Front cover.

It is written, though the story may be apocryphal, that on his deathbed on August 14, 1951 - just eleven days before I was born - legendary newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst uttered one final, cryptic word:

"Stikeman."

What he meant has baffled scholars ever since. But, because his death ushered in my birth, I took it upon myself to divine the mystery and am pleased to report that the puzzle is solved. 

There is, alas, no deep psychological meaning to reveal, only that c. 1916 Hearst commissioned famed New York bookbinder, Henry Stikeman, to bind a copy of Eden Phillpotts' The Girl and the Faun, published in that year in London by Cecil Palmer and Wayward. I will resist commentary on a publisher named "Wayward." 

Upper doublure.

One of the great and most prominent American bookbinders, "Henry Stikeman’s career virtually paralleled the heyday of art bookbinding in America beginning toward the end of the 19th century, into the beginning of the 20th. A Stikeman binding from the 1880s through, say, 1918/1919, represents the best work of the firm...During its prime, Stikeman & Co. was capable of turning out a stunningly large volume of high quality work. They did the large majority of the special publisher 'sets' of the period (for Scribners, Harcourt, Riverside Press, etc.), likely looking upon that type of work as their bread-and-butter...What’s apparent in this American (specifically, New York) work... is that the binders were a small group, sharing ideas, working together, and intent on creating an American Style. Stikeman and Macdonald both worked at Matthews, Stikeman eventually taking the firm over, MacDonald leaving before then and starting his own firm around 1880" (Jeff Stikeman). 

While publishers' sets may have been the bindery's bread and butter it was their custom, one-off work for wealthy collectors like Hearst that won the firm critical acclaim. Stikeman went whole hog for Hearst on this binding, and it's one of the most magnificent works by Stikeman I've yet had in my hands.

Stamped-signature to lower doublure.


It was bound by Stikeman & Co. in contemporary full brown crushed morocco with multiple gilt-rolled borders and French fillets enclosing a broad gilt decorated frame. Doublures of dark and light brown morocco elegantly gilt rolled and tooled and with an elaborate gilt centerpiece and gilt decorative devices with green and crimson inlays highlight the work. Moiré burnt orange silk endleaves, gilt decorated compartments, gilt rolled edges, and top edge gilt finish the binding. 

Illustrated By Sir Frank Brangwyn.

What's the story with The Girl and the Faun? It's a timeless plot: faun meets girl, faun loses girl, faun gets screwed:  One fine Spring day in ancient Greece, the faun Coix falls in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Iole, a shepherd’s daughter. Alas, she throws him over for a human. Heartbroken yet determined to win her back, Coix beseeches the god Pan to transform him into a human so he can love Iole as she desires to be loved. But when his wish is granted, Coix awakens without his memory - and without Iole. The timeless moral: Be careful what you wish for; fugetaboutit.


Illustrator Sir Frank William Brangwyn (1867–1956) was an Anglo-Welsh artist, painter, water colorist, virtuoso engraver and illustrator, and progressive designer. He contributed four color plates to the book and designed it, with decorative text borders and title page.

"If I ain't then God help me."
This is how a shepherd's daughter typically spoke in ancient Greece.

"I will help you and do your bidding for ever. I love you..."
This is how I typically speak on a first date.

Laid into this copy are two signed autograph letters by Phillpotts.


The first, written by Phillpotts to the editor of The Gipsy on April 30, 1915, declares "a new work of mine...'The Girl & the Faun' is a quaint thing, of which I'll say nothing save that I should much like you to see it."


The second, dated July 25, 1915, discusses the illustrator: 

"My dear Savage, I am sorry to report that Brangwyn doesn't like the thought of 'The Girl & the Faun' being published serially before our book publication after war. I have only just heard this & as it would be a serious thing of he chucked it, I will ask you to let me have it again. I feel this a great deal, for publication in your distinguished paper would have been a joy; but I was committed to F. Brangwyn a long time ago & it will be rather a serious thing if I don't go through with him. Of course he has no claim & if you think it worth while raising the question I will; but I expect you've got plenty of good stuff & can let me have 'The Girl & the Faun without difficulty. Sincerely yours, Eden Phillpotts."


You doubt the Hearst provenance? Laid into the book is a bloviating letter from auctioneer Hammer Galleries dated March 1941 attesting to the book's ownership by Hearst.

What is omitted is the solid that in 1916 Hearst recited from this seductively bound copy of The Girl and the Faun while riding his sled, Murray, while wooing nymph, Susan Alexander, er, Marion Davies, she holding tight: "If I ain't then God help me."

And so Hearst's last, thankful word.

Title page.

[STIKEMAN & Co., binder]. PHILLPOTTS, Eden. The Girl and the Faun. Illustrated by Frank Brangwyn. London: Cecil Palmer & Wayward, 1916.

First edition. Quarto (9 7/8 x 7 3/8 in; 251 x 188 mm). viii, 78, [1, blank], [2. adv.] pp., partially unopened. Four color plates. Decorative titlepage and borders. Two autograph letters, signed, bound at front. Letter of provenance laid in. Bound by Stikeman & Co.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The Bookplate Society Holds Super Summer Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

Morton Stephenson (c.1885 - ?) was a British cellist
and composer for orchestra and the theater.

The Bookplate Society, the international association of collectors, bibliophiles, artists and others dedicated to promote the study of bookplates, is holding its summer online auction. The bidding is open now through August 4, 2013.

Five hundred lots are being offered, with examples from the eighteenth century through the twentieth. The auction is intended for members of the Society but is open to all, member or not.

The entire online catalog can be viewed here. Below, a few choice specimens:

Lovell Latham was a sometime writer who contributed to
the London weekly newspaper Pick-Me-Up (i.e. Oct. 26, 1884)
and The Literary World (i.e. Sept. 16, 1892).

 




Who How?
(Designed by "M.S."?).

Given How's motto, "Let There Be No Envy Or Ill Will;"
the two oil wells in the background; the Texas longhorn
at the figure's (How?) left foot; the happy-sad faces
flanking the figure, How was likely a rich Texas oilman
and happy but didn't want to cause offense. It made him sad.

Matilda Constance Schieffelin Ismay (1877 - 1963) was the wife
of Charles Bower Ismay of Hasselbach Hall, Northamptonshire, England,
who, with his older brother, J. Bruce Ismay,, founded the White Star
Shipping Line, which built the Titanic. J. Bruce, aboard the T,
jumped ship to his everlasting shame and infamy.

The artist's monogram at lower right appears to be
that of Gertrude Hudson (1878 - 1958).

Ethel May Newbold (1882-1933), D.Sc., was a fellow of the
Royal Statistical Society and author of many papers while
coordinating and supervising medical and industrial statistical
inquiries for the Medical Research Council.


No, not that JFK.


We don't yet know who W.E. Stanley Merrett
was but he, apparently, had books on the brain.
His motto was "Practices passionately pursued become habits,"
here presumably referring to his love of book collecting.

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All images courtesy of The Bookplate Society, with our thanks.
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Of Related Interest:

Bookplates in a Printer's Library Part I.

Bookplates in a Printer's Library Part II.

Bookplate Special On Menu at Bonham's.

Menacing Bookplates (Don't Mess With This Book!).

The Only Bookplate Designed By René Lalique. 

Authentic G. Washington Bookplate Comes To Auction.

The Man With The Bookplate Jones.

Virginia Library Serves Up Bookplate Special.

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