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32.1 Rare Books + Ephemera
For passionate collectors and researchers, 32.1 Rare Books + Ephemera discovers and preserves the authentic stories of cultural history. We provide a meticulously curated collection of over 13,000 rare books and ephemera items from pivotal social movements, scientific and artistic achievements and underrepresented voices, making significant historical artifacts accessible to all.
Membership(s): IOBA, Ephemera Society of America (ESA)
Danny Lyon The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
$300.00
New York: Macmillan, 1969. Hardcover. Square 4to. 75 black and white plates printed on rectos only. Very Good with a slight spine lean and small red remainder dot on top edge in a Very Good dust jacket. Item #701202503
A classic collection of photographs that documented the demise of the buildings in and around the lower Manhattan.
In 1966, after several years spent rambling around the country photographing a Chicago-based motorcycle club, Danny Lyon returned to his native New York City and moved into a downtown apartment on Beekman Street that was under re-construction. Lyon learned that the block was among the sixty acres below Canal Street slated for clearing, areas that had once been a hub of thriving printing and produce industries but had bled out economically after the Second World War. Lyon returned to New York in 1969 after his work in Texas and the South with the SNCC, and lived for a while with Robert Frank [‘The Americans’]. During his stay Lyon was commissioned by the New York State Council of Arts to cover the demolition of a number of landmark buildings. including old Penn Station. Lyon’s work was notably instrumental in the development of the NYC landmarks preservation movement.
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EXTRAORDINARY FAMILY COPY
HINE, LEWIS W Men At Work
$20,000.00The Manhattan Rare Book Company
”This is a book of Men at Work; men of courage, skill, daring and imagination… We call this the Machine Age. But the more machines we use the more do we need real men to make and direct them…“I will take you into the heart of modern industry where machines and skyscrapers are being made, where the character of the men is being put into the motors, the airplanes, the dynamos upon which the life and happiness of millions of us depend…” FIRST EDITION, AN EXTRAORDINARY FAMILY COPY INSCRIBED BY HINE TO HIS WIFE: “To Sara / Lewis W. Hine.”. With signed letter to Hine from legendary New Yorker Al Smith who at the time was president of the Empire State company, thanking him for the “very fine photographic record” of the construction of the Empire State Building. Smith was the governor of New York from 1923-1928 and was the Democratic nominee for president in 1928, losing to Herbert Hoover. –––––––––– Men at Work is one of the most curious photography books of the twentieth century and a book full of contradictions. It was supposedly published for children and adolescents, but its austere layout and unflinching text (at one point, for example, Hine notes that rock dust will shorten the drillers’ lives) seems at odds with the intended audience; it seems to celebrate not only the workers, but modern industry, from a man who spent his life being severely critical of the dangers and dehumanizing aspects of capitalism; and it poses as a work of dispassionate reportage, but Hine has carefully composed his shots with a clear aesthetic eye. And it is this last point that has made the book endure. For beyond the social commentary or documentary record, what we’re left with is a breathtakingly beautiful book. In the photographs, the workers often remind one of gymnasts, acrobats (Philippe Petite comes to mind), and dancers. The city is very much a character – Hine took many of his pictures from a crane, capturing glorious bird’s eye views of New York. If you look at the composition of the photos, you can see the work of someone who has absorbed the modernist sensibility, with forms and shapes echoing the abstract and cubist works of the time. So yes, Men at Work is a celebration of workers and an important documentary record of the construction of the Empire State Building and the growth of the machine age, but above all it is an artistic masterpiece, one of the most accomplished photobooks of the century. About this copy: Hine family copy: Inscribed by Hine to his wife Sara in ink on the front free endpaper, “To Sara / Lewis W. Hine.” Clearly this was an important family copy, for affixed to the rear is a typed letter signed written to Hine from Al Smith, at the time the president of Empire State, Inc., the company in charge of the construction of the Empire State Building, praising Hine’s photographs. There is also a note of thanks pasted into the front reproducing a letter sent by Hine to Victor Goslin, the man appearing on the front of the dust jacket, and a pasted newspaper clipping about the dangers of silicosis (and a note in the text referring to this clipping where Hine mentions that breathing rock dust will shorten the workers’ lives). Provenance: By descent to Corydon Lewis Hine, the son of Sara and Lewis Hine. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932. Quarto, original green cloth, original dust jacket; custom box. Adhesive residue on blanks at beginning and end, offsetting from newspaper clipping on half-title. Images clean. Cloth very bright; an outstanding example of the very rare dust jacket, with light edgewear and a few minor blemishes.
Offered for Sale by: The Manhattan Rare Book Company -
Signed by Frank Gehry, first edition in English
Dal Co, Francesco; Forster, Kurt W. Frank O. Gehry The Complete Works
$500.00New York: The Monacelli Press, (1998). First edition in English. SIGNED by GEHRY. Large quarto. (iv), 614p. Illustrated throughout from color photos and schematics. Bound in black cloth with silver spine title and Gehry’s name in blind on the upper cover. Slight lean due to the volume’s weight. Fine and bright in like dust jacket. Building descriptions by Hadley Arnold. Vanity Fair labeled Gehry as “the most important architect of our age”
Offered for Sale by: First Folio -
Don Glaister's First Artist's Book. 1 of 60 Copi
Glaister, Donald Brooklyn Bridge A Love Song
$7,500.00Michael Pyron, Bookseller ABAA/ILAB
Cleveland: Foolsgold Studio, 2002. Folio. 28 pp. Limited edition, this is #40 of 60 copies (10 being held hors commerce). Signed by Glaister at the colophon. Backed in gray Nigerian goatskin with sanded aluminum sides, as issued, in felt-lined aluminum box with aluminum label. Prospectus, with minor soiling, laid in. A fine copy of this visually stunning artist book. Glaister describes the production in the prospectus: 14 leaves of 10 mil aluminum, attached to paper hinges. The book opens with an 18-line poem by Glaister in Avant Garde and is silkscreen printed on sanded aluminum. This is followed by five page-spread paintings of the bridge, seen from different angles, times of day, and times of year. Alternating between the paintings are sets of abstract studies, nine in all, that explore the essence of bridgeness. They are likewise made of sanded aluminum with acrylic paint, wire, aluminum tape, laminated polyester film and sand. The studies are mounted onto the aluminum pages. A visually striking celebration of the Brooklyn Bridge. The artist describes this best in the prospectus: “The story of the Bridge is one of opposites. The story of huge mass and lacy delicacy, of ancient and modern, of vitality and disease and death, of honor and corruption, of social vision and common greed. It is the story of links. The linking of East to West, of the agrarian past to the industrial future, of stone to steel, and of course of Brooklyn to Manhattan. Brooklyn Bridge: A Love Song visually and emotionally tells this story. The book is truly a love song. It sings of the elegance, power and invention of this great American icon.” This is the first artist book by Glaister who is one of the foremost design bookbinders practicing today. Glaister carved a path blending classical European bookbinding technique while exploring unexpected and untraditional materials and expression. His bindings appear in private collections throughout North American and Europe and in many of the most important institutions.
Offered for Sale by: Michael Pyron, Bookseller ABAA/ILAB -
Limited Edition boxed set #106/230 Signed by Calle
Calle, Sophie La Fille du docteur | The Doctor’s Daughter (Signed #106/230)
$6,922.05 *
* estimated currency conversionNew York: Thea Westreich, 1991. Fine 1st ed 1991 Thea Westreich hardback, in outer box with label inset to front. Limited Edition box set #1606/230, signed by Sophie Calle, and includes the outer box. Absolutely stunning original creation. Faux leopard-skin boards. The work consists of sixteen facsimile cards of congratulation (purportedly) from colleagues of the artist’s father upon the announcement of her birth. Slight superficial waviness along closed edges of pages due to production process and the tipped-in envelopes.
Offered for Sale by: 84 Charing Cross Rare Books
