The Comic (and True!) Misadventures of a Man Maladjusted to a Horse

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Shivering the timbers"

The Reins of Terror: The Count can't cantor, leaps to contusions, falls to the rear. Tally Ha! Ha! Ha!

"Larking - more dirt, the less hurt!"

Poor Count Sandor. He visits his friend, Lord Alvanley, in Leicestershire, gets on a horse, participates in a fox hunt, and spends half of his time trying to stay on his mount, the other half on his keister.

"Doing it well"

Count Sandor's Exploits in Leicestershire, published by R. Ackermann, Jr., son of the great English publisher of prints, Rudolph Ackermann, in 1833, is a color-plate book of extraordinary scarceness, with OCLC/KVK noting only one copy in library holdings worldwide (Union Catalogue Italy). The ten mounted hand-colored aquatints by Edward Duncan (1803-1882) after paintings by John Ferneley make their Internet debut here on Booktryst.

"A flying leap! - après vous monsieur"

The British Museum has no records in its online database for individual prints from this series, nor of  Ferneley's original paintings upon which these aquatint engravings were based.  This is the first copy to come to market in eighteen years of this classic, desirable, and priceless visual narrative of a woefully inept equestrian with a marvelous self-deprecating sense of humor.

"That's your sort"

 "Smooth glides the water where the brook is deep"

 "He's off! - no, he's on! - he hangs by the rein!"

"At first sight these drawings appear to be, more or less, examples of caricature, but, as a matter of fact, they are actual adventures, described first hand and in ludicrous terms to the artist by the hero, and depicted in the same spirit.

"Taking it coolly - very like a whale!"

 "Yooi - over he goes!"

"Count Sandor, the performer in this pictorial epic, was a Hungarian nobleman who spent one season at Melton Mowbray, on a visit to Lord Alvanley. His daring horsemanship, together with the ensuing mishaps, were the provocation to many a merry laugh over the Melton dinner tables, at the time and long after" (Siltzer).

"A Floorer - pick up the pieces!"

"John Ferneley (1782–1860), sporting painter, was born on 18 May 1782 in the village of Thrussington, 6 miles from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. In 1801 he began a three-year apprenticeship to the Leicestershire-born sporting artist Ben Marshall (1768–1835). Within ten years of starting his apprenticeship Ferneley was earning in excess of £200 a year. The centre of the sporting world, the ‘queen of the shires’ (Brownlow), was Melton Mowbray, and in 1813 Ferneley took lodgings there and in the following year he built in the town first a studio and then a substantial house.. From 1818 onwards he proudly signed his paintings ‘John Ferneley, Melton Mowbray’ and never lacked commissions. He was a prolific painter. Between 1806 and 1853 Ferneley exhibited twenty-two pictures at the Royal Academy, four at the British Institution, and thirteen at Suffolk Street. His average earnings were about £400 a year" (Oxford DNB).

I have a personal affection for British caricature and its often go-for-the-jugular satire. Booktryst recently covered one of Henry Alken's rarer color-plate books satirizing the pretensions of a Londoner inept in the saddle. What makes this volume so very special is that the object of the satire is the one telling the jokes at his own expense, and delightfully so.

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FERNELEY, J. Count Sandor's Exploits in Leicestershire. London: R. Ackermann, Jr. 1833. First edition. Folio (16 x 19 in; 408 x 494 mm). Ten mounted hand-colored aquatints by E. Duncan after J. Ferneley, captioned London, Pub.d 1st Aug.t 1833 by R. Ackermann Jun.r at his ECLIPSE Sporting Gallery, 191 Regent St., each full margined measuring 14 1/4 x 16 1/2 inches (357 x 420 mm).

Siltzer 121 (2d ed., 1841). Wilder p. 126. Bobins 775. Mellon Prints, p. 72. Not in Schwert.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Confessions of a Vintage Shoe Fetishist

by Stephen J. Gertz

Keep your Manola Blaniks, Giuseppi Zanottis, your Dolce & Gabbanas. When I need to snuggle up and spoon I go for vintage, old-fashioned ladies' shoes. It's like collecting rare books: Modern Lit. or Antiquarian? I prefer a shoe that's been around the block, is experienced and has character. They don't make 'em like they used to. As far as I'm concerned, they stopped making shoes when Chronos hit the twentieth century.

Tonight, I've taken six of my favorites out of the Holy Closet of Holies, my inner sanctum of footwear du femme, for an evening of pleasure, just me and my little pretties, menage a sept, alone at last.

Check out the lines on this black beauty. You don't need horse-sense to see its appeal: Sleek in fine silk that when light strikes at the right angle seductively shimmers and entices. Irresistible! And the heavenly flare of the heel as it touches the pillow I pose it on...A goddess upon a velvet pedestal, is it not so? I admit that there are times when, after gazing upon it with all the love a man can have for ladies' footwear, I lose control, madly grab it, grope to my heart's content, and sigh with the greatest of satisfaction.

Oh, how often have Miss Frilliest and I spent a quiet evening at home, curled up by the fireplace. a brandy in one hand, her in the other. I love it when a woman's shoe wears a mini-skirt - so above the heel risqué! And, aren't you, as I am, tempted to lift it to spy what delights lie underneath? Don't get me started on the needle-work on the toe. I LOVE tattooed ladies.

Provenance is everything, I believe, and when I raise her to my nose and gently inhale the scent sends me, and I become Proust in remembrance of pumps past, this pump in particular, and thank my lucky star that anti-fungal and anti-bacterial foot-care products once had no place in society's upper strata. I prefer the natural aroma of plantar fascia against leather - aged and fermented to perfection. Like a great wine, a great shoe must have a great nose. Notes of goatskin, chocolate,  peat moss, mango, rich loam, horse manure, cigars, shmütz, toe cheese, and talc - I frolic in the Elysian Fields; I can't help it. It tells you where a shoe has been, and I am often  lost in a reverie while contemplating a  lady's tumescent foot boldly inserting itself into the warm inner shoe over and over again, what that foot must feel, and what Miss Frilliest felt to be so filled to fullness. I get all pumped-up. Sue me.

Not a pump, not a slipper, it's my flat-bottomed land-gondola with heel as rudder, and I often imagine that I'm standing at its stern, oar in hand, as I serenade it and, by extension, all ladies' shoes with "O Solé Mio." Just because I'm a Vice-President of the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perthshire &c. &c. doesn't mean I don't get lonely. So lonely. Call me Shoeless Joe from Kokomo, a tragic figure in my own psychodrama.

I like womens shoes the way I like my women. Sturdy. Dependable. Silent. A bit stout. I don't trust a pump that isn't a little plump; too lean and it's clearly not enjoying  life to the fullest. I like a shoe that  has meat on its bones and leaves a big footprint - on  my  chest, back, whatever; 'makes  no  difference to me.  Check-out that strap and stiletto toe! I get shivers as I worship. Excuse me while I retire to the throne room to, uh, genuflect.

Ditto the above with this fine lady who dares red. Le plus passionnés! We all know the symbolism of red lipstick. 'Goes double with red heels. "I am woman shoe, hear me roar, in plus-size too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back and pretend. 'Cause I've heard it all before and I've been down there on the floor and no one's gonna keep me down again."

Not if I can help it, mon cher.

Finally, la piece de resistance in whose presence I am powerless to resist, possessing all the qualities I most admire plus a demure, low-key color that purrs, "I'm cool on the outside but a tigress on the inside."

To worship and adore that which comes between a lady and the floor is a religion not easily converted to. We are the few, the proud, and, thus chosen, just trying to be all that we can be. It ain't easy being Shoeish.

Oh, I hear your tittering and muffled chuckles. I suppose I should be embarrassed. I'm not. Some neurologists have suggested that shoe fetishism is caused by the feet and the genitals occupying adjacent areas of the somatosensory cortex, possibly entailing some neural crosstalk between the two. No surprise to me. I've been listening to them chat for as long as I can remember and I can't get enough of it. I love dirty talk.

Now, excuse us, please - time for a little quality-time, enfin seul!

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GREIG of Glencarse, T. Watson, A Vice-President of the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perthshire &tc. &c. Ladies' Old-Fashioned Shoes. With Eleven Illustrations from Originals in his Collection. Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1885. First edition (2d, 1900). Oblong quarto. 9 text pp. Eleven chromolithographed plates.

Colas 1312. Lipperheide 1744. Hiler p. 395
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Images courtesy of Marilyn Braiterman Antiquarian Bookseller, who is currently offering this rare volume.

Photo credit: Fang-Ling Jong.
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The Most Amazing Woman You've Never Heard Of

by Stephen J. Gertz

With one exception, all first-person accounts of famous seafaring voyages have been written by men. The exceptional woman was not the first to circumnavigate the globe but she was and remains the sole one to have written about it, the only great voyage narrative told from a woman's point of view.

Rose Marie Pinon, later de Freycinet, Paris, 1812, aged 17.
From an engraving of the original portrait
in the possession of Baron Claude de Freycinet.

Rose Marie Pinon was nineteen, well-educated, and an attractive middle class girl when she married 35-year-old French naval officer and navigator, Captain Louis de Freycinet (1779-1842), in 1814. The two were extremely devoted to one another.

Debarking from Toulon three years later, on September 17, 1817, she accompanied Louis on the  corvette Uranie, which he commanded, for a three-year surveying voyage  that would take them and crew across the Atlantic to Rio de Janero, then around South Africa to Mauritius, soon Western Australia, New Guinea, Guam, Hawaii,  Samoa, the Cook Islands, New South Wales, New Zealand, and around South America's Cape Horn to the Faulklands where the Uranie was shipwrecked upon submerged rocks

The vessel damaged beyond repair the expedition continued on another ship, ultimately returning to Le Havre on November 13,  1820.

Essential point: Wives (and women in general) were strictly forbidden to join their husbands or otherwise travel solo on a ship wholly comprised of male crew members. Rose de Freycinet had been smuggled aboard disguised as a man by Louis, at great risk to his career; it was highly illegal. Rose's presence on the ship at first caused some disruption amongst the crew but she enchanted them and was immensely popular in most of the voyage's ports of call.

Her account of the three-year circumnavigation was composed of a series of letters to her friend, Caroline de Nanteuil,  in diary form. Rose recorded life aboard ship, observations of the people and places they visited, scientific work of the expedition, relationships between men and women, and the work of artist Jacques Etienne Arago. She had a keen eye for detail and composed vivid descriptions of the strange and exotic places they visited.

Detail from an original pen and ink drawing by Arago
of an aqueduct on Mauritius featuring Louis and Rose.
She wears her distinctive hat and scarf, as usual.

Although fêted by many while visiting the French colony of Mauritius, Rose evidently found the going a bit racy for her taste; her true grit was of a softer, gentler nature than Mattie Ross's in Charles Portis' novel. Her diary contains a polite and good-natured account of the reaction of the Creole women to her attire:

"I always wore a scarf, which strangely enough offended all the Creole women, as the ones I met, laughingly or mockingly, urged me to remove it. Mme Lindsay [her particular friend there] alone not only found it most becoming but would have liked to imitate me; however, she was afraid that her husband might not allow it, for, as you know, English women wear low-cut dresses even for dinner. I cannot begin to tell you all the gossip that my scarf gave rise to; there were some who claimed that undoubtedly I must have had some blemish on my breasts, or some scar that was hidden by the gauze. Others had learnt from one woman that I had nothing to hide, as she had seen me wearing a low-cut dress and had noticed nothing untoward, and so on... But all joined forces to make fun of my reserved nature, giving me the nickname of 'Mrs. Virtue' or other similar names, to which I can assure you I paid no attention whatsoever" (A Woman of Courage, p. 35).

Rose and her manuscript survived the dangers of the voyage and the shipwreck in the Falkland Islands yet all evidence of her presence on the Uranie and her role during the voyage were expunged from the official record of the expedition, which consumed Louis for twenty years, appearing as Voyage Autour de monde, entrepis par order du Roi... (Paris: Pillet ainé and Imprimerie Royale, 1824-1844), comprised of eight quarto volumes of text and four atlas folios. 

Réception à Diely (i.e. Dili, East Timor), November 1818.
The official version, sans Rose, painted by Pierre-Antoine Marchais.

 As an officer of the King, Louis was compelled to omit Rose's participation. Yet he did sneak her into the official narrative: He named both "Rose Island" in the Pacific near Samoa and "Cap Rose" in Shark Bay in Western Australia after her.

It was not until 1927 that her diary was finally published, magnificently illustrated by reproductions of twenty-five paintings done by Arago, who had been on the Uranie as visual documentarian. Published in a highly limited edition, it is quite scarce and is currently being offered for $8,000 (Australian; $8021 USD)

The same scene, avec Rose, by Arago.
Note her ever-present hat and infamous
scarf, which she holds rather than wears.

The life of this intrepid woman was tragically cut short when she died of cholera in 1834, aged 38 years, after nursing Louis through the same illness.
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FREYCINET, Rose. Campagne de L' Uranie (1817-1820). Journal de Madome Rose de Saulces de Freycinet, d'apres le manuscrit original, accompagné de notes par Charles Duplomb. Paris: Sociétie d'Editions Geographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales, 1927.

Borba de Moraes I, p. 328. Chadenat 1607. Hill 652.
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The first edition in English was published as A Woman of Courage. Translated and edited by Marc Serge Riviére. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1996.
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With the exception of the portrait of Rose, all images courtesy of Hordern House Rare Books, of New South Wales, Australia, with our thanks.

Horden House has recently published a beautifully produced hardbound catalog, Captain Louis De Freycinet and His Voyages to the Terres Australes, a collection of important printed, manuscript, and pictorial material related to the two great French expeditions to Australia, that of Baudin  in 1800 and Freycinet seventeen years later. It is sure to become a key bibliographical reference.
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Rare (Dirty) Books For Valentine's Day

By Nancy Mattoon

The Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale
of the Marriage of Cupid and Psyches.
Translated from the Latin of Apuleius
by William Adlington.
Designs by H.M. O'Kane.
Printed by Clarke Conwell at the Elston Press, 1903.
(All Images Courtesy of George Peabody Library.)

To Shakespeare, music was the food of love. But to bibliophiles, there's nothing quite like a rare book with the look of love to set the heart racing. The amorous librarians at the George Peabody Library of Johns Hopkins University have created a visual feast of rare volumes for students at their Baltimore campus seeking "a nerdy but awesome way to spend Valentine's Day."

VEEN, Otto van, 1556-1629.
Amorum emblemata figuris aeneis incisa.
Studio Othonis Vaeni.
Antverpiae, Venalia apud auctorem, 1608.

For the rest of us, the Maryland rare book experts been kind enough to post a beautiful set of images from their erotic volumes. Thanks to their efforts, book-lovers around the world can have a taste of the exhibit, wittily named Dirty Books & Longing Looks. As the Hopkins website describes the show: "From cute depictions of cupid to 18th century French erotica (oh yeah!), there's bound to be something to get your heart aflutter!" Get a sneak peek at some of the images below, and see the full set on the Peabody Library's Flicker page:

COLONNA, Francesco.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
Venice : Aldus Manutius, Romanus, Dec. 1499.

This detail of a satyr and a nymph is part of what the Peabody terms "one of the most beautifully printed books from the incunabula period." Known for its particularly elegant page layout and meticulous woodcuts in a refined Early Renaissance style, Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a mysterious romance. In this heroic tale, Poliphilo pursues his true love Polia through a dreamlike landscape. After many strange adventures the long suffering lovers are happily reunited at the Fountain of Venus.

HANCARVILLE, Pierre d'.
Monumens de la vie privée des douze Cesars :
d'après une suite de pierres gravées sous leur règne.
Caprées : Chez Sabellus, 1780.

This detail depicts Marc Anthony, dressed as Hercules, with a seductive courtesan. Author Pierre d'Hancarville was a self-proclaimed "Baron," who was in fact the poor son of a bankrupt cloth-seller. He worked as an amateur art dealer, and through this work came to know antiquities collector William Hamilton, whose Greek and Pompeian vases later formed the basis of the collection in the British Museum.

HANCARVILLE, Pierre d'.
Monumens du culte secret des dames romaines.
A Caprée : Chez Sabellus, 1784.

A detail of Venus Callipiga, or Venus of the derriere. Pierre d'Hancarville edited a four volume inventory of the collection of William Hamilton, which is widely considered to be the most beautiful catalog of antiquities ever printed. In addition he created two volumes of what were, in his day, some of the most frequently pirated collections of pornographic images in Europe, one based on purported depictions of the private lives of the twelve Caesars, and the other on what were said to be representations of a secret society of Roman courtesans.

VEEN, Otto van, 1556-1629.
Amorum emblemata figuris aeneis incisa.
Studio Othonis Vaeni.
Antverpiae, Venalia apud auctorem, 1608.

A detail from a plate depicting Venus and Cupid triumphant. Otto van Veenn's Amorum emblemata consists of 124 prints of "love emblems" accompanied by poetical verses, chiefly from Ovid. First published in 1608, it is aimed at young lovers who are told that the power of love is they key to all happiness. Many copies included "interleaving," or blank pages deliberately bound in between each printed page to allow the owner of the book to make his own additions and comments.

Wishing readers everywhere a Happy Valentine's Day from Booktryst.
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The Bard Or Not the Bard? That Is The Question.

By Nancy Mattoon

Cobbe Portrait.
Claimed to be a portrait of William Shakespeare
done while he was alive, ca 1610.
(Images Courtesy of Morgan Library and Museum.)

What some experts claim is the one and only portrait of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime is the centerpiece of a new exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum. The painting was unveiled in 2009 by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, and according to the Morgan, "Recent technical analysis—as well as the portrait's superior quality—has established it as the original of a long series of portraits traditionally identified as Shakespeare."

The Jacobean painting had hung unrecognized for centuries in an Irish country house belonging to the Cobbe family. Both this portrait and a recently identified portrait of Shakespeare's patron Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, were part of the estate of Archbishop Charles Cobbe (1686-1765). According to the exhibit, "The Cobbe portrait has significant resemblances in costume and design to Martin Droeshout's engraving of Shakespeare published in the First Folio (1623), and bears a Latin inscription, taken from a poem by Horace, addressed to a playwright."

Martin Droeshout's Engraving of Shakespeare, 1623.

All of which sounds pretty convincing, and it has convinced some very respected Shakespearean scholars that the Cobbe portrait is the real deal. (Chiefly the Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stanley Wells, the Head of Education for the Trust, Paul Edmondson, and Mark Broch, the curator of the Cobbe Collection.) On the other hand, several scholars immediately took exception to the identification of the subject of the portrait as Shakespeare, most notably Katherine Duncan-Jones, professor of English at Oxford University, and Tarnya Cooper, the curator of 16th-century portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London, who curated that institution's 2006 Searching for Shakespeare exhibition.

And even the Morgan curator, Declan Kiely, was guarded when asked about the Cobbe portrait: "The position the Morgan takes is that the Cobbe portrait is authentic—that is, it is a painting dating from 1610 and depicts a sitter who may be identified as Shakespeare." The Cobbe portrait is, in fact, a dead ringer for another "Shakespeare portrait" that has been branded a fake. Known as the "Janssen Portrait," this painting has been called "the earliest proven example of a genuine portrait altered to look like Shakespeare," by Erin Blake, Curator of Art and Special Collections at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The altered balding hairline in the "original"
Janssen portrait,
as it appeared when purchased by the
Folger Shakespeare Library in the early 1930s.

Blake notes that the Folger "owns about forty painted portraits of Shakespeare (including miniatures), and none of them are authentic portraits from life. About half were never intended to be considered life-portraits, but are honest representations of the artist's conception of Shakespeare. These are sometimes known as 'memorial portraits' and were particularly popular in the Victorian period. The rest are fakes, being either pictures once asserted to be Shakespeare from life but actually painted in recent times, or genuine portraits from Shakespeare’s era that were later altered to look Shakespearean."

The Janssen portrait after 1988 restoration.

Fake Shakespeare portraits are a virtual cottage industry. According to the Wikipedia article on Portraits of Shakespeare, "Within four decades of its foundation in 1856, upwards of 60 portraits were offered for sale to the National Portrait Gallery purporting to be of Shakespeare, but there are only two definitively accepted as portraying him, both of which are posthumous. One is the engraving that appears on the cover of the First Folio (1623) and the other is the sculpture that adorns his memorial in Stratford upon Avon, which dates from before 1623."

The bottom line on Shakespeare portraits is that:

A. There is no physical description of Shakespeare in existence.

B. There is no evidence Shakespeare ever sat for a portrait.

Nevertheless, just as there are scholars who are convinced that somebody else wrote Shakespeare, there are scholars who are convinced that somebody sat Shakespeare down and painted his portrait. But they can't agree on exactly who it was, in either case.

The Changing Face of Shakespeare continues through May 1, 2011 at the Morgan Library and Museum.
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The Rarest, Most Beautiful Atlas of Obstetrics

by Stephen J. Gertz

One of six plates from:
Uteri praegnantis & ad partum maturi demonstrationes
London:  1757.

A copy of the first edition of the scarcest obstetrical atlas yet produced, and certainly one of the most beautiful, featuring six magnificent life-size plates by Jan van Rymsdyk for Charles Nicholas Jenty, has come to market. There are no copies recorded in COPAC, and OCLC notes only one copy in North America, at University of Texas. 

"Superb life-size mezzotints " (Garrison & Morton) are what make Uteri praegnantis & ad partum maturi demonstrationes (1757) so attractive, in spite of their graphic nature.

"The six beautiful plates of pregnancy and parturation made by Riemsdijk for Charles Nicolas Jenty (1757), of London, are rare examples of mezzotint, which was seldom used in medical illustration" (Garrison).

The first plate was actually drawn by Thomas Burgess and the remainder by Rymsdyk. The mezzotint engraving was done by Thomas Burgess (2), Edward Fisher (1), and Richard Purcell (3). Jenty chose mezzotinting because "this method is softer, and capable of exhibiting a nearer imitation of Nature."

"Charles Nicholas Jenty was an elusive eighteenth century character about whom little is known apart from his writings, and even these are rare. They seldom come on the book market, and few medical libraries possess copies. Not fully appreciated because of their rarity, they are outstanding examples of the arts of the craftsmen, and have also ensured that Jenty's name has not been completely forgotten" (Thornton, Jan van Rymsdyk Medical Artist of the Eighteenth Century).

Another plate from:
Uteri praegnantis & ad partum maturi demonstrationes.
London:  1757.

Jan van Rymsdyk is generally known as the illustrator of obstetrician  William Smellie's Sett of Anatomical Tables (1754), and anatomist William Hunter's Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774), all of which were drawn about the same time but in the case of Hunter not published until much later. 

So rare is Uteri praegnantis & ad partum maturi demonstrationes that, with few exceptions, this work remains unnoticed by websites discussing Rymsdyk; it seems to be completely unknown to all  except dedicated scholars.

In 1758 Jenty issued an octavo volume with sixteen pages of text to accompany this atlas, under the  title, The Demonstrations of a Pregnant Uterus of a Woman at her Full Term. Both the atlas and the text are extremely rare, and absent from almost all medical libraries.

A German edition was issued in 1761 at Nuremberg, with the plates re-engraved, under the title, Demonstratio vteri praegnantis mulieris cum foetu ad partum maturi.

The two plates from Uteri praegnantis & ad partum maturi demonstrationes that illustrate this post make their debut on the Internet via Booktryst. They will likely be the only digital reproductions  of any of the six mezzotints for some time to come; the atlas is that scarce.

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JENTY, Charles Nicholas. Uteri praegnantis & ad partum maturi demonstrationes.  London: [For the Author], 1757. Broadsheet (600 x 465 mm) comprised of six mezzotint engraved plates.

Garrison & Morton 6156.4. Russell 479. Waller 5152. Blocker, p. 211.
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Images courtesy of William Patrick Watson Antiquarian Books,  who is offering the book, with our thanks.
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Posters on Parade at Bloomsbury

by Stephen J. Gertz

Strictly speaking, the parade has passed us by: These posters were offered at Bloomsbury - London last month. Through the magic of digital technology, however, we can reprise the parade,  posters marching in reverse and reaching Booktryst for your delectation.

STREBELLE, J. Cadum. Pate Dentifrice.

I don't know whether to brush my teeth with this stuff or shmear the pate on a Ritz cracker. Either way, the Menthol of the Alps has never been so breathtaking. Q: Why is she brushing her cheek? An unusual Alpine custom? OCD?

PURVIS, Tom. Continent via Harwich. c.1930.

"I'll have the ham & swiss harwich, on rye. You?"

ANONYMOUS. The Rider. c. late 1950s.

"Going my way?" Yes, please. This traffic-stopping Hell's Angel prefers the ergonomic comfort of a Vespa for a gracefully feminine mount and dismount. (And what man reading this post is not wishing he were, if only for a moment, this particular Vespa).

CASSANDRE, A.M. Maison Prunier.

Maison Prunier serves lobsters and fruits de mer. People, another story. Yet - "Waiter, there's a human in my soup!

CHAMBERS, Charles. [Food Will Win the War]. 1917.

The above is one of the most extraordinary I've seen i quite a while. An in-Yiddish poster appealing to Jewish immigrants in America, their gratitude, and their sense of patriotism to help the war effort. The visual message is clear: You're lucky to be here; now, help our boys over there.

TEXIER, Rene le. Shell X-100 Motor Oil.

 Put a Dali in your tank - the gas mileage is surreal. And the Birth of Venus motif has never been more surrealistic: Aphrodite as a motor oil - for that well-lubed, washed, stabilized, and protected intimate experience of love.

DOMERGUE, Jean-Gabriel. Monte-Carlo.

Flower-girl at a Mafia funeral.

HOHLWEIN, Ludwig. Stakato. 1935.

She may be stacatto but she looks legato to me.

STEINLEN, Théophile Alexandre. Le Réve.

What's a poster sale without a Steinlen?

SEM. [pseud. of Georges Goursat]. Pout la Libertie du Monde. c. 1917.

Okay, you "naysaying nabobs of negativity" (Spiro Agnew, per speechwriter William Safire), this poster is not telling the story of America sinking hopelessly into deep debt but, rather, the status of the United States as a symbol of freedom for all the world, from seas to shining seas.

KAUFFER, E. McKnight. Washington, American Airlines. 1948.

Who says corporate America has taken over our government? Not the great E. McKnight Kauffer. But an aisle seat in the Lincoln Bedroom would be nice, considering how agonizing the TSA security line must be for this destination. Skip the Goulash ala Capitol on this flight, go with Dry Roasted Congressional Nuts.

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Images courtesy of Bloomsbury Auctions, with our thanks.
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