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ZARFirst Folio
Purveyors of Fine and Rare Books in many fields since 1980. Specialists in Fine Bindings and Illustrated Books.
Membership(s): ABAA, ILAB
Khayyam, Omar The Mirror & the Eye Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
$1,875.00
Andoversford, Gloucestershire: The Whittingon Press, (1984). No. 48 of 100 copies quarter bound in vellum over marbled paper boards and signed by the illustrator and the translater. (Total edition 126). Imperial quarto. 63p. Translated by Iftikhar Azmi. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy with drawings in brown printed from the line blocks. Printed on Arches Creme wove mould-made paper. Bound in the gilt-titled quarter vellum over Whittington marbled paper-covered boards, t.e.g. Housed in Mushroom Tre Kronor paper-covered slipcase, reinforced with brown cloth at the head, foot and spine. A beautiful production as new in like slipcase.
Whittington Bibliography. No. 71; Coumans 377.
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A reflective, non-sentimental meditation on belief
Porter, Katharine Anne (1890–1980) A Christmas Story Author SIGNED – Drawings by Ben Shahn (1898–1969)
$450.00New York: Delacorte Press, 1967. Limited Edition. Hardcover in a slipcase. The design and production place this squarely within the tradition of American literary livre d’artiste projects of the postwar period, pairing a canonical author with a major modern artist in a deliberately limited format. Octavo, green cloth in matching slipcase. Limited to 500 numbered copies, this being no. 306 and signed by Katherine Anne Porter on the limitation page (Ben Shahn’s name in facsimile). Designed by Ben Shahn, with a special frontispiece drawing and additional illustrations throughout. Condition: The bindings are tight and square. Text is clean; light, even age-toning. Slipcase shows minimal handling. Signed limitation page present and complete. Originally published in Mademoiselle, A Christmas Story is a reflective, non-sentimental meditation on belief, innocence, and moral inheritance, written late in Porter’s career and widely regarded as one of her most affecting shorter works. Shahn’s linear, symbolic drawings—angels, floral fields, architectural motifs—complement the text with restraint and gravity, aligning the book with mid-century fine-press sensibilities rather than commercial illustration. Historical Context:Katharine Anne Porter is a central figure of American modernism, best known for Ship of Fools and her finely wrought short fiction. This late work reflects her long-standing preoccupation with moral clarity and mythic structures. Ben Shahn, a leading figure in American social realism, brings a spare, emblematic visual language that elevates the book beyond holiday literature into the realm of serious artistic collaboration Subjects: Katharine Anne Porter, Ben Shahn, Signed Limited Editions, Mid-Century American Book Design, Literary Illustration, Christmas Literature, American Modernist Prose, Livre d’Artiste Tradition, American Literature, Modernism, Fine Press, Artist-Illustrated Books
Offered for Sale by: Blind Horse Books [ABAA] -
First edition Civil War Confederate history folio
La Bree, Ben The Confederate Soldier in the Civil War, 1861-1865
$2,000.00Louisville: Courier-Journal Job Printing Company, 1895. First edition. Includes The Fooundation and Formation of the Confederacy by Jefferson David, Campaigns, Battles, Sieges, Charges, Skirmishes, Etc by Robert E. Lee and The Confederate States Navy by Franklin Buchanan; Folio, 16.25″ x 11.5″; 480 pages with numerous illustrations and color frontes. Item #33697 Cloth bound in very good condition; Scaring to upper front corner of cover; Rebacked with original covers and spine laid on; Inner hinges reinforces with cloth tape.
Offered for Sale by: By The Way Books -
Persian and East Asian Motifs - Edwardian elegance
Housman, Laurence (1865–1959) Princess Badoura: A Tale from the Arabian Nights [Golden Age Color Plates]
$650.00London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913. Illustrated by Edward Dulac (1882-1953). First Printing, Trade. A luminous Edwardian retelling of an Arabian Nights tale, lavishly illustrated by Edmund Dulac at the height of his powers. The jewel-like color plates and richly decorated binding make Princess Badoura one of the most visually striking productions of the Golden Age of Illustration.This 1913 trade first presents Laurence Housman’s retelling of the story of Princess Badoura, drawn from The Thousand and One Nights, and illustrated with ten color plates by Edmund Dulac. Issued during Dulac’s most celebrated period, the book exemplifies his refined decorative style, combining Persian and East Asian motifs with a distinctive Edwardian elegance. The story follows the love between a Persian prince and a Chinese princess, both confined by their royal parents after refusing arranged marriages. Their fates are intertwined through the intervention of genies, leading to trials, transformation, and eventual reunion. Housman’s text emphasizes wit, resilience, and moral agency, echoing Scheherazade’s role as both storyteller and survivor within the larger Arabian Nights tradition. Bound in cream cloth decorated in gilt and turquoise; Teal endpapers with peacock embellishments, Quarto; approximately 10¼ × 7¾ inches. [ii], 113 pages. Illustrated with 10 color plates by Edmund Dulac, each mounted and protected by captioned tissue guards. All plates present. Moderate wear to the binding with minor age-soiling to cloth, dimming to the sunned spine, small neat tears to the head and tail of the spine, and mild warping to the rear board. A slight hint of spine exposure at the center of the text block. Binding remains firm and sound. Foxing heaviest at the endpapers, with occasional light spotting or smudging to interior pages; pages otherwise unmarked. Princess Badoura occupies a notable place within the Golden Age of Illustration, pairing Dulac’s ornamental color work with a narrative drawn from one of the most enduring story cycles in world literature. Dulac’s plates emphasize atmosphere and symbolism over literal realism, using stylized figures, flattened perspective, and rich decorative patterning that influenced book design and illustration well into the twentieth century. The volume remains especially valued by collectors for its visual coherence, period binding, and the completeness of its illustrative program. Subjects: Edmund Dulac’s color illustration, Arabian Nights adaptations, decorative cloth bindings, Edwardian book design, and early twentieth-century illustrated gift books, Illustrated literature of the Edwardian period, fantasy and folklore derived from The Arabian Nights, and Golden Age of Illustration book production.
Offered for Sale by: Blind Horse Books [ABAA] -
Political Artist's Book by Claire Van Vliet
Van Vliet, Claire Greed
$600.00Michael Pyron, Bookseller ABAA/ILAB
Newark, VT: Janus Press, 2013. 6-1/2″ x 7.” Limited edition, one of 120 copies. Accordion fold with 8 panels, 4 of them are fold-down pages. Each of the four page-spreads include letterpress text in various typefaces and colors which fold-down, expanding the canvas of words, sayings, and accusations (including a catalog of U.S. Senators and Representatives of the 111th Congress who became lobbyists—a list that fills the fold-down page in a small font); these opposite a lithograph by Van Vliet, each lithograph is titled by the top word on the opposite page: Propagandist, Lobbyist, Banker, Joe Public. Bound in gold paper repeated printed with the word “Greed,” and all housed in gold slipcase. A fine copy. In a contemporary newspaper article in the Burlington Free Press, Candace Page relates an interview with Van Vliet: “[She] picks up dummy of GREED, a slim volume that will sit inside a glittery cover of gold paper. It opens like an accordion to display four Van Vliet black-and-white lithographs of distorted faces: A banker, a lobbyist, a newscaster, she says, ‘and this one on the end, the sap, John Q. Public, us.'” Van Vliet continues in the Page interview: “The word ‘greed’ will be printed multiple times on the cover in heavy, unevenly inked type, as though it were printed contemptuously, by some greedy person with no respect for the written word. The paper is not handmade — that would be too good for the book. Instead it is ‘slick, nasty machine-made paper,’ she says. The edges of the gold cover will be sharp ‘because greed is not a comfortable subject.'” There is a wonderful irony that the lithographs employed in Greed were originally drawn for an edition of Kafka decades before that just weren’t quite right for the project. Here, they are perfect! This is a striking book, a political book, one might say, an angry and defiant book. Van Vliet’s politics being informed by the McCarthy era during which she was a student, she admits to having distrusted the powerful ever since. This edition sold out very quickly and is now rare in commerce. A book that was, is, and will always be relevant.
Offered for Sale by: Michael Pyron, Bookseller ABAA/ILAB
