Upcoming Highlights: Fine Illustrated Books & Graphics

At Auction January 29

Complete Catalogue

 

Taking place during Bibliography Week in New York City, this auction focuses on fine twentieth-century livres d’artiste. Among a large number of Art Deco masterworks is George Barbier and F.L. Schmied’s luscious, sensuous collaboration, Le Cantique des Cantiques. Also included is Sonia Delaunay’s 1925 tour-de-force of Simultaneous Contrast design theory, Ses Peintures, Ses Objets

Fine American press books feature the rare portfolio of six signed, numbered etchings by Richard Diebenkorn accompanying the Arion Press Poems of W.B.Yeats, unique bindings of extremely limited editions by the Cheloniidae Press, and from Leonard Baskin, founder of the Gehenna Press, a specially dedicated double-suite set from an edition of 15 copies of Diptera: A Book of Flies & Other Insects, 1983.

Masterpieces of Modernist artists’ books include fine copies of Georges Rouault’s rare 1938 Cirque de l’Étoile Filante and Passion, and German Expressionist high spots Wassily Kandinsky’s Klänge and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Umbra Vitae in original bindings. Important examples of fine printing, typography, architecture, Asian and European fine arts, picture books (including children’s, fairy tales and fables) and graphics will round out this concentrated sale.

 

Contemporary Art

 

two etchings, a coat and a map, by Diebenkorn

Lot 186: W.B. Yeats, Poems, illustrated by Richard Diebenkorn, accompanied by a suite of six etchings by Diebenkorn, Arion Press, 1990. Estimate $12,000 to $18,000.

 

front and back cover of Living Arts magazine

Lot 184: John Bodley & Theo Crosby, Living Arts, issues 1-3, London, 1963-64. Estimate $800 to $1,200.

 

 

 

Design

 

architecture design plate

Lot 87: Frank Lloyd Wright, Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe, one of 25 deluxe leather-bound portfolios, Berlin, Ernst Wasmuth, 1910. Estimate $8,000 to $12,000.

 

poster proof for a tie advertisement by Hervert Bayer

Lot 92: Herbert Bayer, Cohama Ties, advertising proof, New York, 1944. Estimate $600 to $900.

 

 

 

Modern Livres d’Artiste

 

4 aquatint illustration by Georges Rouault

Lot 169: Georges Rouault, Cirque de l’Étoile Filante, Paris, 1938. Estimate $30,000 to $40,000.

 

Bellmer's automatic writing manuscript reproduced in heliogravure

Lot 178: Hans Bellmer & Georges Hugnet, Oeillades ciselées en branch, Paris, 1939. Estimate $2,000 to $3,000.

 

full spread of the binding

Lot 152: Georg Heym, Umbra Vitae, illustrated by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, first edition, Munich, 1924. Estimate $6,000 to $9,000.

 

Lot 151: Wassily Kandinsky, Klänge, first edition with 56 woodcuts, Munich, 1913. Estimate $30,000 to $40,000.

 

 

 

Fine Printing & Press Books

 

etching of a fly by Leon Baskin

Lot 20: Leonard Baskin, Diptera: A Book of Flies & Other Insects, 33 etchings with watercolor, Gehenna Press, 1983. Estimate $6,000 to $9,000.

 

Lot 28: Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven, special publisher’s copy for the illustrator, Alan James Robinson, the first book from the Cheloniidae Press, 1980. Estimate $3,000 to $4,000.

 

elaborate binding

Lot 9: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, eine Tragödie von Goethe, Ernst Ludwig Presse, Frankfurt, 1922. Estimate $1,500 to $2,500.

 

 

 

Art Nouveau to Art Deco

 

Image of a plate from La Plante et ses applications Ornementales, by Eugène Grasset.

Lot 100: Eugène Grasset, La Plante et ses applications Ornementales, with 72 plates, Paris, 1895. Estimate $6,000 to $9,000.

 

two plates from Rudyard Kipling's the Jungle Book

Lot 128: Rudyard Kipling, Le Livre de la Jungle, with plates by Paul Jouve, engraved by F.L. Schmied, Société du livre contemporain, Paris, 1919. Estimate $7,000 to $10,000.

 

blue and purple pochoir of a woman in front of a many-paned window

Lot 132: Georges Lepape, Les Choses de Paul Poiret, 12 pochoir plates, Paris, 1911. Estimate $3,500 to $5,000.

 

Lot 138: François-Louis Schmied, Le Cantique des Cantiques, one of 110 copies, with 80 wood-engraved illustrations, Paris, 1925. Estimate $10,000 to $15,000.

 

Image of a plate of fashion designs by Sonia Delaunay.

Lot 122: Sonia Delaunay, Ses Peintures, Ses Objets, Ses Tissues Simultanés, Ses Modes, 20 pochoir plates, Paris, 1925. Estimate $6,000 to $9,000.

 

 

Art History & Decorative Arts

 

spread from an illuminated manuscript

Lot 71: Livre d’heures, illuminated manuscript, France, late 19th century. Estimate $3,500 to $5,000.

 

six foot chromolithograph illustration of a cathedral ceiling

Lot 67: Strickland’s Lithographic Drawing of the Ancient Painted Ceiling in the Nave of Peterborough Cathedral, Cambridge, 1849. Estimate $1,000 to $1,500.

 

 

Complete Catalogue

 

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