Bertram Rota Ltd Catalogue
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Bertram Rota Ltd Established 1923 31 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9LT +44 (0) 20 7836 0723 [email protected] www.bertramrota.co.uk Catalogue 306 TERMS OF BUSINESS. The items in this catalogue are offered at net sterling prices, for cash upon receipt. Charges for postage and packing will be added. All books are insured in transit. PAYMENT. We accept cheques and debit and credit cards (please quote the card number, start and expiry date and 3 digit security code as well as your name and address). For direct transfers: HSBC, 129 New Bond Street, London, W1A 2JA, sort code 40 05 01, account number 50149489. VAT is added and charged on autograph letters and manuscripts (unless bound in the form of a book), drawings, prints and photographs WANTS LISTS. We are pleased to receive lists of books especially wanted. They are given careful attention and quotations are submitted without charge. We also provide valuations of books, manuscripts, archives and entire libraries. HOURS OF BUSINESS. We are open from 10.30 am to 6.00pm from Monday to Friday. Appointment recommended. Unless otherwise described, all the books in this catalogue are published in London, in the original cloth or board bindings, octavo or crown octavo in size. ... or dust-wrappers as we tend to call them (avoided elsewhere because of potential confusion with the term “wrappers”)... It scarcely seems believable today that dust-wrappers were largely ignored by bibliographers and not especially prized by collectors (some claimed to despise them) as recently as is the case. Laurence Whistler, despairing of the time his brother Rex spent designing them, referred to them as “mayflies”. Even now we feel that the history and beauty of the dust-wrapper remain undervalued in spite of the huge increase in commercial value we have seen. This catalogue is an attempt to address this. It falls into three sections, beginning with books listed in alphabetical order of their dust-wrapper artists and designers, an arrangement we do not think we have seen before. Where possible we have added short details which we hope will place the artist in context and give a little information about his or her other achievements. The second section deals with publishers and series, the third section lists books more conventionally by author and date. We have tried to show examples of many kinds of dust-wrapper: the early and plain, the elegantly typographical, the highly ornate, the purely textual, the promotional and the lurid. Many however are included for no other reason than that we like them. Dust-wrappers, like the first editions they adorn, tell us, of course, so much about the time when their books first appeared, as they progressed from the merely protective to the marketing tool. We see authors illustrating their own books, illustrations which are additional to those within a book, and works which may be deemed original to some considerable extent by artists that are simply not available in any other form. There is an example or two of the phenomenon of the fragile wraparound band, one of the few physical innovations in dust-wrapper history, but more importantly we believe we are illustrating a history of graphic design. Our understanding of the history of advertising, printing processes, graphic techniques, pricing and so on is deepened, not to mention bibliographical significance (although this has been largely ignored for the purposes of this catalogue). We note also the deliberate “family resemblance” of dust-wrappers of works by a certain author or in a particular publishing house series so as to make them immediately recognisable for what they are. A high proportion of the artists represented were not only illustrators but also painters in oil, watercolourists, portraitists and landscape painters, sculptors, interior designers, decorators, typographers, type designers, calligraphers, cartoonists, etchers, photographers, muralists; designers of stained glass and frescoes, posters (especially for transport, film and theatre), wallpaper, wine labels, postage stamps and advertisements, costume, stages for theatre and ballet, monuments and memorials, textiles, carpets and tapestries, not forgetting the novelists, poets and playwrights – their work is or was all around us. As far as we are aware there is no properly organised collection of books with their dust-wrappers as such (institutional libraries, even the deposit libraries, often store dust-wrappers separately and chaotically or not at all). Jan Tschichold, the typographer and book designer, once said that dust-wrappers should be thrown away as “mere publicity”. We hope this catalogue will go some way to proving him wrong. Tom Adams An award-wining painter and designer (including designs for film special effects and rock music posters), who created many dust-wrappers for Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, made his name with The Collector. He illustrated for Eagle and opened The Fulham Gallery in 1967 and The Calvert Gallery in 1980. 1. Amis (Kingsley) . Colonel Sun; A James Bond Adventure . By Robert Markham. Jonathan Cape, 1968. First Edition. Very nice copy in slightly worn dust- wrapper with a few small tears at the foot of the spine panel. £75 2. Fowles (John) . The Collector . Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1963. First American Edition. Small stains at fore-edge, otherwise a very nice copy in dust-wrapper which has some soiling and browning and is rubbed with a few short tears at the extremities; loosely inserted is Stephen King’s leaflet, A New Introduction to the book. £80 3. Fowles (John) . The Magus . Jonathan Cape, 1966. First English Edition. Cloth a little soiled and slight creasing to first few leaves, but a nice copy in somewhat rubbed and chipped dust-wrapper. £120 __________________________________________ Jankel Adler; Amina Ahmed Jankel Adler, 1895-1949, friend of Paul Klee, was a Polish still-life and figure painter who also designed murals and frescoes, one for the Düsseldorf Planetarium. 4. Miller (Henry) . The Wisdom of the Heart . Poetry London, 1947. First English Edition. Severely darkened throughout as usual, but a very nice copy in frayed and repaired dust-wrapper that bears an over-stamped dollar price. £85 5. Jhabvala (Ruth Prawer) . The Nature of Passion . George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1956. First Edition. Fine copy in slightly soiled and somewhat crudely price- clipped dust-wrapper; bookplate. £100 __________________________________________ Edward Ardizzone 1900-1979, prolific, hugely popular and much collected, Ardizzone was an Official War Artist and was awarded the Kate Greenaway, Carnegie and Hans Christian Andersen Medals. He developed “a freely drawn and unmistakable style”. His brother-in-law Gabriel White considered that “perhaps no artist since Randolph Caldecott has captured so easily the qualities essential in successful illustration for a child... bold and clear and tell[ing] the tale in the simplest lines and colours.” ( DBBI ). Ardizzone was also responsible for many posters, menus, wine labels and lists. 6. Ardizzone (Edward) . Tim and Ginger . Boards, dust-wrapper and illustrations throughout in colour and black-and-white by Ardizzone. Oxford University Press, 1965. First Edition. 4to. Original pictorial boards. Fine copy in dust-wrapper. £150 A flawless copy. 7. Thomas (Dylan) . A Child’s Christmas in Wales . Boards, dust-wrapper design and colour and black-and-white illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Dent, 1978. First Edition with these illustrations. Original pictorial boards. Fine copy in dust-wrapper that shows very faint signs of an erased pencil inscription on the upper panel. £65 __________________________________________ J.Z. Atkinson; John Austen Atkinson designed posters for London Transport in 1933 and specialised in dust-wrappers for crime fiction including those for the Collins Crime Club series. 1886-1948, Austen’s early work owed much to Aubrey Beardsley modified by the Art Deco idiom, The Studio praising his “astonishing fertility in design combined with a power of imaginative penetration of no common order”. His later work (after the 1920s) “began to lose its stylish effervescence as his images increasingly consisted of mannered, though still elegant, full-length figures in close-up, set in a very shallow picture space ... He often took an active part in designing many of the books he illustrated.” ( DBBI ). He and John Banting (q.v.) both studied under Bernard Meninsky. 8. Greenwood (Walter) . Standing Room Only: Or ‘A Laugh in Every Line’ . Jonathan Cape, 1936. First Edition. Top corners of covers and some leaves a little bruised, slight foxing of preliminaries, otherwise a nice copy in slightly soiled and chipped, price-clipped dust-wrapper; bookplate. £55 By the author of Love on the Dole . 9. Campbell (Roy) . The Flaming Terrapin; a poem . Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1924. First Edition. Original quarter light brown cloth, plain orange paper-covered boards, orange paper lettering label to spine. Covers slightly discoloured by the action of paste, otherwise a very nice copy in somewhat darkened and worn dust-wrapper with “Second Impression” printed on spine panel and at the foot of the upper panel; pencil notes on lower panel. £80 The author’s first book. __________________________________________ Michael Ayrton; Don Bachardy Michael Ayrton, 1921-1975, painter, printmaker, writer, sculptor, critic, broadcaster and novelist, also designed stage sets and costumes. He designed and illustrated books for Wyndham Lewis and William Golding amongst others and at one point shared a studio with John Minton. He succeeded John Piper (q.v.) as art critic for The Spectator. The portraitist and painter Don Bachardy was introduced to Isherwood in 1953. He moved into Isherwood's home in Santa Monica, where they lived together as partners until Isherwood's death in 1986. 10. Wilson (Angus) . The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot . Secker & Warburg, 1958. First Edition. Fine copy in dust-wrapper. £75 11. Isherwood (Christopher) . Down There on a Visit . Methuen, 1962. First English Edition.