Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, 16-18 November 2018
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Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, 16-18 November 2018 1 www.bookvica.com F O R E W O R D Dear friends and collegues, Bookvica team is happy to present to you our new catalogue for the upcoming Boston International Antiquarian Book fair 2018! Our focus is once again on the life of the USSR in 1920s-1930s when new ideas have found its embodiment in the life of the Soviet man. The study of a Soviet man begins with Architecture - where new families lived and worked, what new cities looked like, what furniture they used, what transport they used, etc. A lot of attention was paid towards bringing up a new generation so section Children was another of our focuses with 6 books about and for Soviet children. A big section is dedicated to art for masses and early Soviet culture - workers clubs. agitation and propaganda newspapers, book illustration and typography, etc. Books on Soviet Fashion and Samizdat books are taking us a bit further in time but one can learn a lot from them about early Soviet period. Soviet theatre in 1920s-30s was at its peak, so we gathered a few interesting books of that period with numerous photographs. Art Theory section explores a complicated yet booming art life of the country - from avant-garde and constructivism to purism. Our traditional sections include Literature (p. 65) and Science (p.27) with some classical works by Darwin, Lobachevsky, Tsiolkovsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and others. There are special sections dedicated to Ukrainian books, Women, and Shakespeare in Turkish in the end of the catalogue, don’t miss it! Bookvica team November, 2018 2 I ARCHITECTURE 01 [SOVIET WORKER MUST REST] Doma otdykha: Sbornik statei i materialov [i.e. Pensions: Collection of Materials and Articles]. Moscow; Petrograd: Gosizdat, [1923]. 225, [5] pp.: ill., 4 pl. 27x18 cm. In original printed wrappers. Very good. Partially uncut. Tears and small losses of the spine and extremities of the wrappers, signature on the t.p. (ink), damp stains on margins of pages. Only copy in the First edition. One of 3000 copies. Very rare. British Library This edition is an amazing evidence of labour hygiene that according to the Worldcat. was initiated in a new country - annual two week vacation for which government was determined to create a public system of sanatoriums and pensions. Sanatoriums and pensions (‘doma otdykha’ literally means houses of rest) were a distinctive feature of the USSR from the very beginning of its existence and for other socialist countries. They were designed to provide rest for workers. Initially the sanatoriums were much more medical institutions than resorts. Employees got vouchers to go there, often free of charge. The emphasis was made on the fresh air, sports and educational activities. Extraordinary numerous photographs of the exterior, interior and people and their activities are gathered in this edition as well as materials, statistical data, approximate list of inventory for sanatorium of 100 people, schedule, sport exercises, food, walks and excursions, lectures and other educational and entertainment activities. Highlight of this edition is the article by Nikolai Semashko (1874-1949), People’s Commissar of Public Health from 1918 until 1930; he was one of the organizers of the health system in the Soviet Union and promoter of such sanatoriums and ‘right for rest’, social and private hygiene, etc. In the end of the book there are design projects of sanatoriums which come with the last article on constructing such facilities by Moscow architect Dmitry Chelishchev (1879-1964). This is an excellent evidence of the time: not only it provides a ARCHITECTURE 3 data on a very speci c eld of architecture but also a glimpse at the life in early USSR. $950 Cover. No 01 Photograph. No 01 Design project. No 01 ARCHITECTURE 4 Photographs. No 01 02 [SOVIET MODEL HOUSING] Tipovye proekty i konstruktsii zhilishchnogo stroitel’stva, rekomenduemye na 1930 [i.e. Model Projects and Housing Designs Recommended for 1930]. Moscow: Gos. tekhnich. izd-vo, [1929]. 156 pp.: ill. 35x26 cm. In original constructivist wrappers. Professional restoration of the spine and margins of wrappers, occasional foxing, otherwise a very good clean copy. Worldcat First edition. Rare. One of 12100 copies. located copies A rare collection of project designs for model housing of Early in collections of Getty and experimental Soviet era which came to an end in 1930s. Columbia El Lissitzky, M. Ginzburg, I. Gurevich and other designers and University. architects were involved in creation of project and text materials for this album. Album design by E. Nekrasov. The Stroikom of RSFSR published this album of the most ARCHITECTURE 5 valuable model projects to facilitate specialists of all sorts with materials and to help them avoid spending time and money on unsatisfactory projects and also “to present the most rational constructions of the time” which is why this album is so interesting to study nowadays. The first part of the album is dedicated to plans of model projects of one, two, three and four bedroom apartments. A part of these projects were considered innovative and praised by foreign architects like Bruno Taut and Le Corbusier during their visit (according to introduction). Even though these projects were seen as very perspective, the ideal was a commune house devoid of any signs of Western bourgeois society and corresponding to the ideology of the new Soviet society (commune house even featured on the front cover). Only a few such houses were built at that point so there were not much data and the authors included such project in this album to provide information and initiate a conversation about reconstruction of Soviet housing based on such commune houses. El Lissitzky wrote a part on furnishing of houses. Lissitzky understood that with designing the furniture one must take in account a real Soviet consumer and his possibilities, so he turned his attention to furnishing apartments taking in consideration that most of families lived in one bedroom at that time. This situation demanded a new approach to designing furniture for masses. “The very change in the type of housing, - wrote L. Lissitzky, - already determines the change in the type of furniture ... it is impossible to mechanically pile up one or two rooms with what was intended for 6 rooms. Our one dwelling is intended to perform a number of functions - food, work, rest, and it should be equipped accordingly to it”. Lissitzky also commented on future reconstruction of day to day life of a Soviet man: “The next stage is the transition from the individual living cell to the commune housen and setting the challenge of equipping a whole collective with furniture”. This was said in 1929 and next year in Dresden he presented a life size project of a living cell in commune house. The second part of the album includes technical information on general rationalisation of constructions, stairs, intermediate floors, windows, doors, walls, etc. supplemented with numerous schemes, photographs, charts. $2,500 ARCHITECTURE 6 Cover. No 02 Design project. No 02 No 02 ARCHITECTURE 7 No 02 ARCHITECTURE 8 03 [URBAN RENEWAL IN 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR]. Moscow: Standartizatsiya i ratsionalizatsia, 1933. [240] pp.: ill. 15,5x21,5 cm. In original constructivist cardboards. Illustrated endpapers. Very good, vertical crease of the front and back boards, tears and small losses of the spine, darkening of the spine and front endpapers, owner’s signature on the free leaf of the front endpaper (pen), darkening of the title page. Worldcat locates First and only edition. One of 4000 copies. Book design by N. Il’in. copies at NYPL, Columbia, Yale, This album illustrates the achievements in the field of Stanford. construction and public utilities in the first Five-year plan: it gives the most typical and interesting objects in various parts of the USSR, photos and plans for the reconstruction of cities. The album was released as an annex to the two-volume eponymous book. The book includes short introduction on plans of construction and renewal in USSR, sections on city planning, construction of living and public housing, green plantations, renovation and improvement of the streets, city transport, power supply, water supply, sewerage, bath and laundry. Each section is opened with short description of the current state of this issue and planned changes. The significance of the album is in its plans and photographs with captions. The most interesting are newly built houses and clubs of workers like house on Novinsky boulevard in Moscow (on the pillars after Corbusier’s system), workers’ clubs in Moscow (one of them by K. Mel’nikov) and Kramatorsk (Donbass), commune housing on Khavskaya Street in Moscow (in front of Shukhov tower) and in Baku, mechanical laundry in Ivanovo, design projects of bath/laundry in Dnepropetrovsk and in Murmansk, design projects of a hotel in Kharkiv machinery for cleaning streets, yard trash cans, pipe laying, fire fighters and power supply system, Moscow metro construction, trams and river trams, dispensaries,a newly built hospital in Moscow and Kuzbass, department store, etc. The album itself has an interesting constructivist design made by Nikolai Il’in (1894-1954), graphic artist who started to work with books in the early 1920s in Nizhny Novgorod. Later in Moscow he worked at Detgiz and became the main artist of Goslitizdat. As a book designer and printing expert, Il’in successfully solved the problem of ARCHITECTURE 9 creating a whole image of the book as one. He designed many books and magazines with expressive and diverse covers, fonts of various styles. He also worked on the creation of new typographic fonts.