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Tag Archives: watermark

Book of the Week — Duineser Elegien

10 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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abstractions, alchemy, angel, birth, Castle of Duino, Count Harry Kessler, Cranach Press, crush, destruction, discontent, disdain, driven, E. Prince, Edward Johnston, Edward Sackville West, endure, English, Eric Gill, fugitives, G. T. Friend, Gaspard and Aristide Maillol, German, Germany, Hans Schulze, heart, Hogarth Press, humanities, Insel -Verlag, italic type, itinerants, landscapes, Leipzig, London, Maillol-Kessler paper, Max Goertz, metaphysical, Rainer Maria Rilke, sobs, Tavistock Square, terrible, terror, visions, Vita Sackville-West, Walter Tanz, watermark, will, Willi Laste, wood initials


Who would give ear, among the angelic host,
Were I to cry aloud? and even if one
Amongst them took me swiftly to his heart,
I should dissolve before his strength of being.
For beauty’s nothing but the birth of terror,
Which we endure but barely, and, enduring,
Must wonder at it, in that it disdains
To compass our destruction, every angel
Is terrible, and thus in self-control
I crush the appeal that rises with my sobs.

Duineser Elegien
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
London: Printed for the Hogarth Press, 1931
First edition in English

From the translator’s note: “Something remains to be said of the actual content of the poem (for it is really a single poem in ten sections). This is admittedly exceedingly complex and arcane, and will not yield to a first, or even to a second reading. For Rilke’s poetry is of the metaphysical order and consists for the most part of an elaborate alchemy of hypostatised ideas, in the expression of which the invention of grammatical quips and subtleties plays…is an important part. His imagination seems naturally to have dealt in visions of embodied abstractions, and…he pushed the vision as far as possible, creating detailed landscapes and humanities of abstract categories…”


But tell me, who are these itinerants,
These fugitives more hasty than ourselves,
Urgently driven from the start, — by whom?
To gratify what discontented will?

From the colophon: “Count Harry Kessler planned the format of this volume. Eric Gill designed and himself cut on wood the initials. The Italic type was designed by Edward Johnston and cut by E. Prince and G. T. Friend. The paper was made by a hand process devised in joint research by Count Harry Kessler and Gaspard and Aristide Maillol. The book was printed in the winter and spring of 1931. Count Harry Kessler and Max Goertz supervised the work of setting the type and printing. Compositors: Walter Tanz and Hans Schulze. Pressman: Willi Laste.

The book was printed for the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London W. C. 1, and both the English and the German texts were reproduced by the courtesy of Insel-Verlag in Leipzig who are also the Agents for the book in Germany.

The whole edition consists of two hundred and thirty numbered copies for sale on handmade Maillol-Kessler paper with the watermark of the Cranach Press, and signed by the translators; and eight numbered copies on vellum for sale with hand-gilded initials, signed by the translators. This is copy Nr. 63.”

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Curtis Census

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Publication

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American Indians, copper plates, Curtis Census, drawing, Edward Curtis, etchings, ethnography, field notes, French Impressionists, glass negative, glass positive, gravures, gum prints, handpress, J. Willard Marriott Library, Japanese handmade silk tissues, Mississippi, negatives, nineteenth century, painting, papers, photographer, photogravures, Pictorialism, platinotypes, printing process, rare books, rice paper, Scott Beadles, Seattle, sepia inks, Tim Greyhavens, Tissue, Van Gelder, vellum, watermark

Rare Books is pleased to announce the launch of the Curtis Census, a website produced by Tim Greyhavens for the global community. The J. Willard Marriott Library is one of the institutions that holds an entire set of Edward Curtis’ The North American Indian.

From Tim’s website: “Published by Edward Curtis from 1907 to 1930, The North American Indian was planned to be a limited edition of 500 sets. Due to the extremely high cost of the publication and the prolonged publication cycle, it’s thought that no more than 300 complete or partial sets were finally printed. This census will determine, as accurately as possible, the actual number of complete or partial sets that were printed and their present locations…Although The North American Indian is one of the great publications of all time, there is no definitive answer about how many sets were originally published. Curtis did not keep a master subscription list, and different documentation about the project provides conflicting information.”

Congratulations, Tim, on a great project.

Click here for the website’s biography of Edward Curtis. Curtis was born in 1868. 2018 is the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Click here for the website’s excellent article on Curtis’s The North American Indian.

Visit Rare Books to look at this remarkable set of photogravures.

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952)
Seattle, WA: E. S. Curtis, 1907-30
E77 C97

A collection of 2,232 photogravures of American Indians taken between 1890 and 1930 and published between 1907 and 1930. A massive project, professional photographer Edward Curtis’ intention was to document every major tribe west of the Mississippi, portraying what he perceived to be a vanishing culture. While he was neither the first nor the last person to photograph the American Indian, he was surely the most prolific. His monumental publication presented to the public an extensive ethnographic study of numerous peoples.

The North American Indian consists of twenty portfolios of photogravures and twenty volumes of field notes bound with smaller gravures. A photogravure is made from a printing process utilizing a copper plate that is made from a glass positive which itself is made from a glass negative. The plate is hand wiped with sepia inks. Excess ink is removed and the plate is forced onto paper with a handpress, capturing all the etched details on the plate. The photogravure produces a soft, atmospheric appearance similar to that achieved by French Impressionist painters. This photographic process, along with drawing and painting on negatives, platinotypes and gum prints, was popular at the end of the nineteenth century. The movement, known as “Pictorialism” was a way for photographers to add personal vision and expression to their works.

The portfolio gravures were printed on three different papers, Van Gelder, a watermarked paper, Vellum, a rice paper, and Tissue, Japanese handmade silk tissues. Forty of the original sets were printed on Tissue, the rest equally split between Van Gelder and Vellum.

Images selected and scanned by Scott Beadles.

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Book of the Week — [اختصار مختصر المقاصد الحسنة]

12 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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al-Sakhāwī, Aziz Atiya, bookworms, crescents, ḥadīth, laid paper, Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd al-Bāqīal-Zurqānī, Naskhī, watermark

MS-OR.12.48
‘kabīkaj, kabīkaj, kabīkaj, yā kabīkaj iḥfaẓ al-waraq’

اختصار مختصر المقاصد الحسنة
زرقاني، محمد بن عبد الباقي
1168 [1754]
Ms Or. 12.48

An abridgement of Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd al-Bāqīal-Zurqānī’s Mukhtaṣar, itself an abridgement of al-Sakhāwī’s al-Maqāṣid al-ḥasanah, a collection of ḥadīth; the present work is anonymous, but al-Jabartī (in ʻAjāʼib al-āthār, ed. Ḥasan Muḥammad Jawhar et al., [al-Qāhirah]: Lajnat al-Bayān al-ʻArabī, 1958-9; v. 1, p. 176) informs us that al-Zurqānī summarized his own abridgement “fī naḥw kurrāsayn bi-ishārat wālidihi”; the present work would seem to fit that description; an extract is also listed by Brockelmann (GAL II:35).

Naskhī in a trembling hand; rubrications; 25 lines/p; corrections and notes on the margins; title and invocation against bookworms (‘kabīkaj, kabīkaj, kabīkaj, yā kabīkaj iḥfaẓ al-waraq’) on fol. 1a; one folio missing after fol. 7; laid paper; watermark: three thick crescents; unbound.

From the collection of Aziz Atiya (1898-1988.)

MS-OR.12.48-colophon

~~Thanks to Mark Muehlhausler for the catalog record and for bringing the curse against bookworms to my attention. LP

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