Archive of Drag Performer Burma Taylor (1929-2004)

(Drag) (Transgender) Archive of Drag Performer Burma Taylor (1929-2004), a.k.a. BeBe Taylor, a.k.a. Gene “Gary” Garra. Approximately 440 photographs (some altered or collaged), hundreds of reproduced fashion and erotic illustrations, newspaper clippings, handbills, and misc. drag ephemera, pasted in two elephant folio scrapbooks [24-½ x 19-½ in. and 23 x 19 in.], together with 34 homoerotic drawings by Taylor, loose. Regarding the linguistic framework of this description, when referring to Burma/BeBe/Gary, we will generally use the pronouns “they” and “them,” but we use “he/him” and “she/her” where it preserves historical accuracy (of speech about drag, and when direct references to such pronouns can be established in the scrapbooks themselves).

A monumental visual record of a drag career spanning more than thirty years, recording Burma Taylor’s evolution from Catskill resort drag shows in the early 1950s to a Drag magazine centerfold in 1983. Taylor’s surprisingly fluid identity both foreshadows and parallels the remarkable social and cultural shifts in the performance of gender and sexuality during the same period; shifts that led to increased visibility for gay communities and nonbinary people.

Compiled without regard to chronology, the enormous scrapbook pages weave together a personal history of drag and desire, punctuated by color and b/w photographs of family, lovers and friends. Included in the folios are original artworks, both drawings and collages, which ecstatically combine the popular illustration of pin-up girls (Petty, Vargas, et al.); the faces of Hollywood film icons of the 1940s; sci-fi and horror films; and the erotic art of Tom of Finland, George Quaintance, and others.

Taylor’s story begins in the center of Vol. I, in a series of photos of his Italian immigrant parents, Frank and Rosie, who arrived in New York in 1906. A sister was born in 1910, but Taylor, born Gene Frank “Gary” Garra, was born much later, when his parents were 37 and 49. He grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, and was 18 in 1945, barely missing the draft for WWII. There are many suggestive photos that appear to be taken between 1945-1950, but the scrapbook’s next dated record is a 1952 advertisement for an upper west side hair salon where Taylor worked. Around the same time, he began to perform in drag, known for his belly-dancing and celebrity impersonations (most notably of Rita Hayworth).

The same year?, he landed a lead performance, under the alias BeBe Taylor, in “Guys will be Girls,” a drag show at the fabled Catskills pickup spot, the Pussycat Lounge, in Kiamesha Lake, NY. He also entered the downtown party scene. Prominent photos of Taylor in several slur-filled articles are featured in the scrapbooks, including “New York’s Fancy Faggot Fracas,” and “These Mad Artists’ Balls,” at least one from the magazine Tip-Off. Although these articles make use of the worst homophobic stereotypes, they are remarkably open about the real sexuality and community of drag (even as it is performed for straight audiences), rather than the wink-and-nudge coverage it often received in the mainstream press. These articles are themselves crucial, and strikingly rare, historical documents of the wide-range of discourse surrounding queer communities in the 1950s.

In the late 1950s or early 1960s, Taylor seems to have shed their “Gary” identity completely. Copious scrapbook documentation of glamorous performances and modeling jobs during the 1960s and 1970s are followed by an extensive collection of photographic prints of Rita Hayworth, Glen Ford, and other film stars. Taylor’s personal photography from this period, however, is intimate and casual, documenting an open, public life as a gay man, and increasingly, as a woman.

Around the time of Taylor’s first photoshoot for Lee Brewster’s radical transvestite magazine Drag (1972), their stylized feminine persona had evolved into a highly sexualized, but less-binary one. Taylor’s own artwork reflects this, depicting erotic fantasy scenes with men, women, and androgynous or hermaphroditic characters, including mermaids and monsters, in endless combinations.

In her 1983 Drag centerfold, Taylor is described as a resident of California. There are many photos that seem to be taken in California, where Taylor was probably identifying publicly as a woman, although she was clearly comfortable in front of the camera without her clothes on, and with a nonbinary set of physical sex markers.

There are a number of images that could be as late as the 90s. A substantial amount of research remains to be done on Taylor, their circle and connections to Brewster, the Queens Liberation Front, and their later life. Genealogical records suggest Gene Garra died in NYC in 2004, and was buried in Potter’s Field. The Drag centerfold can be viewed here.

SOLD

Two vols. Elephant folio. Vol. 1: Black binder, 24-½ x 19-½ inches, with 17 leaves; each leaf mounted recto and verso [34] pp. with b/w and color photos, handbills, newspaper clippings, original artwork, most in colored pencil, and a large number of cut-out reproductions of early Hollywood and gay illustrators; each page covered in rigid plastic film; inside rear board also collaged. Including nine pages of personal and professional photography of Taylor, their friends, and family (for a total of more than 250 photographs, a few pages mostly 3-¼ x 2-¼ in., but many larger, including several 8 x 10 in. portraits, and pages of collaged performance photos taken from larger prints), two pages of Taylor’s drawings, and one full-page caricature of Taylor by Zel, the celebrity caricaturist of the Brown Derby, Los Angeles. Most elements Very Good, a few cut-outs discolored by scrapbook paste. Cloth boards, metal ring binder, rubbed. Vol. II: Black stab-bound portfolio, 23 x 19 in., with 11 leaves mounted recto and verso; [22] pp. with b/w photos, newspaper clippings, and collaged Hollywood film stills and other photos of classic film stars (for a total of approx. 190 photographic prints: 60 personal and 130 promo, many altered/collaged); inside rear board also collaged. First two leaves [4] pp. and rear board with photos of Taylor and clippings of parties and performances they attended (for a total of approx. 60 personal photos).

Together with 34 loose drawings, various sizes, most approaching or larger than 8-½ x 10-½ in., a few smaller. A few signed and dated. Some toning to edges, leaves with remnants of previous mounting verso, not visible recto. Very good. Currently housed in protective plastic sleeves.

Archive of Leather Fraternity Membership Files

Archive of Leather Fraternity Membership Files, Los Angeles, California, 1973-1978.

Approximately 1.0 linear foot composed of: 200 membership files (approx. 190 with 4 page membership application, the majority manuscript, others typed); most with a photograph of the member and at least once piece of additional correspondence, for an approx. total of 1000+ pages and 175 photos, ranging in size from 1-½ x 1 in. to 8 x 10 in., most closer to 3-¼ x 2-¼ in.; 9 applications and membership correspondence loose, now housed in mylar; two administrative files, and one sheet of Leather Fraternity stickers. Occasional wear from handling, a few photos darkened or toned, overall very good.

An exceptional research archive of 200 Leather Fraternity member files, almost all containing a 4 pp. confidential membership application with exhaustive details pertaining to the applicant’s sexual history, fetishes, and fantasies. Fraternity demographics represented a diverse age range, experience level, and sexual identification. Most applications accompanied by at least one required photograph, many with two or three, forming a parallel collection of vernacular self-portrait photography, some of it erotic. Together the files represent an astonishing and intimate catalogue of male homosexuality and kink, all self-described in answer to prompts including “My first sexual experience,” “My first S/M experience,” and “What do you think are your best qualifications for your roles as slave/master?”

The Leather Fraternity began in 1973 as a fee-based confidential “introduction referral service” for gay leathermen in Los Angeles. Creator John Embry (1926-2010) was a serial entrepreneur who used the Fraternity newsletter as a crossmarketing device with his S/M mail-order business, Robert Payne’s Leather Emporium. Two years later, he founded the quintessential leather/BDSM magazine, Drummer, with Jeanne Barney as editor-in-chief. In Drummer’s first issue (June 1975), the Leather Fraternity was described as an “international, membership only, fast growing group of hundreds of gay Leathermen,” who would be “hand-matched based on the criteria in the confidential application.” Fraternity classifieds were an important part of the magazine, and until 1977, one had to be a member to respond.

The importance of the Fraternity and Drummer cannot be overstated; together they provided visibility for “the emerging identity of the ‘new’ homosexual,” a “homomasculine” or “hypomasculine” male, radically different from prevailing effeminate gay stereotypes. The magazine and the businesses associated with it created a network “of men who did not always have a sense of belonging elsewhere in the gay men’s community. It served as a communal forum for often isolated individuals and allowed for existing leather and kink institutions to be more easily identified and accessed. But perhaps most importantly, it generated a common culture and shared language that helped integrate local networks into a more national and international conversation. It gave these men images, stories, information, commentary, products and ideas to jerk off to, to relate to, to identify with, and that served to empower and grow a fledgling network of leathermen.” (1)

For two years before Drummer, Embry’s Fraternity newsletter had been connecting men with corresponding kinks. The application was designed to elicit the utmost specificity regarding appearance, preferred roles, dress, toys, substances, and activities. Invited to use additional sheets of paper if necessary, many files include longer, manuscript accounts of their deepest, idiosyncratic fantasies. The potential members placed an extraordinary amount of trust in the Leather Fraternity and Drummer staff. They provided their real names and addresses during a period when most of the described activities were considered deviant, if not outright illegal. Indeed, from 1975-1976 the core staff of Drummer were under 24hr police surveillance.

Police harassment of Embry, Barney, and others culminated the night of April 10, 1976, when the LAPD raided a Drummer charitable mock “slave auction” at the Mark IV Baths. The police “emancipated” the “slaves” and arrested 40 people for violating an 1899 statute forbidding involuntary servitude. Charges were dropped against most defendants, but four eventually plead guilty to felony pandering, including Embry, Barney, and the porn star Val Martin, who had been acting as the auctioneer.

Two substantial administrative files in the archive document the lead up to the auction and its aftermath. Correspondence between Barney and various members shed light on the ongoing conflict both with the LAPD and internally at Drummer and the Fraternity. Eventually, Embry and Barney split ways: he took Drummer to San Francisco in 1977, initiating a legal battle over the Fraternity membership files and dues. Although Barney’s bid to revive the Leather Fraternity newsletter independent of the magazine was ultimately unsuccessful, these files suggest that she continued to accept new members through 1978 and ended up with most, if not all, of the original application materials.

Files organized by last name and box number, this group including names beginning G-Z. It is difficult to speculate on exactly how many files might have existed, but given Embry’s 1975 claim to “hundreds” of members, we believe this may well represent at least two-thirds of the original membership files. Many with additional correspondence, some with considerably more. Most in regard to satisfaction or lack thereof with the membership; dues; missing issues of Drummer (a free subscription was included with membership); and edits to the encapsulated classified ads. Scattered references to responses written to other members that can be cross-referenced within the archive, a few unopened letters.

More images available on request.

ON HOLD

(1) Race Bannon, “John Embry’s Inductee Speech: Leather Hall of Fame,” 2014. See also Jack Fritscher, Gay San Francisco: The Rise and Fall of Drummer Magazine, 2013.

(Graphic Design) Four Typographic X-Rated Film Posters

Cinéma Béverley. Four Typographic X-Rated Film Posters. Paris: Imp. Lacroix, n.d. [1985-1987]. 24 x 16 in.; single-color offset on white stock. Cinema stamp verso. Some small dents and light handling marks, very good.

From the “last porn theatre in Paris,” Le Cinéma Béverley, which opened in 1983. These distinctive posters were produced in accordance with the 1975 French law that prevented X-rated films from using imagery in their street-side advertisements. Surviving the advent of video and internet porn, before finally closing in 2019, Le Béverley was an innovative cinema, introducing couples’ screenings to the Paris adult scene.

Film titles: Jeune Filles en Chaleur à Sodomiser (1985); Jouissances Anales pour Adolescents en Chaleur (1986); Le Nain Assoiffé de Perversité (1987); Voluptes Anales (1987).

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Six Posters from an Advertising Campaign for the Margo St. James Task Force on Prostitution

(Sex Work) [St. James, Margo]. De Souza, Neville and Gerard Vaglio. Six Posters from an Advertising Campaign for the Margo St. James Task Force on Prostitution. San Francisco: COYOTE, [1995]. Six posters, each 22 x 14-1/8 in.; b/w offset prints, rolled, with occasional horizontal creases from being pressed while rolled, more noticeable to some posters; minor edge wear; creased corner to one poster. Very Good.

Six of seven posters produced for a 1995 ad campaign, part of St. James’ and COYOTE’s longstanding work to decriminalize prostitution in California. Produced pro bono by sympathetic professional designers Neville de Souza and Gerard Vaglio, the posters pair arresting images with stark text. They address the legal and physical vulnerability of street prostitutes, the stigmatization of arrest records for future employment, and the cost of San Francisco’s anti-prostitution police squad (at the time more than $5 million annually), among other issues.

According to contemporary news reports, 7,000 of the posters were produced and distributed throughout the city. Not surprisingly, the campaign was controversial, particularly with the city’s Board of Supervisors Prostitution Task Force, whose members felt the posters promoted prostitution. Melissa Farley, well-known anti-trafficking activist, responded to the ad campaign “Just because the oldest jobs in the world are slavery and pimping doesn’t mean we as a society should support racism and prostitution.” James and COYOTE staffer Carol Leigh were both on the task force, six other members resigned “in disgust” over the dispute, claiming the panel had been “stacked” with advocates of legalization (SFGate).

Few of the posters appear to have survived, we find no holdings in OCLC or examples on the market.

ON HOLD

​(Contraception) The Dawn of Today: Let Va-Jel open the way [...]

​(Contraception) Alpha Laboratory. The Dawn of Today: Let Va-Jel [scientific birth control] open the way to a better happier life for all women. Chicago: N.p., n.d. [ca. 1925]. Single sheet, folded: 6-1/2 x 4-1/4 in., printed recto and verso in pink, [6] pp.; near fine.

Elegantly designed Deco leaflet for Va-Jel germicidal jelly, “a new freedom for women,” and “the key to a happier life,” is “voluntary motherhood.” Aimed at well-bred, but working women? See recto, additional advert for “Va’Antiseptic” douche for the woman “who desires her person to be [...] free from [...] the acrid accumulations of an active day, perhaps continuously upon her feet ....”

Not found in OCLC or Atwater.

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(Sexual Health) Annual Report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Vols. 2-5, 9 [subtitles vary]

(Sexual Health) Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Annual Report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Vols. 2-5, 9 [subtitles vary]. Portland, OR: The Society, 1913-1920. 5 vols., 8vo, 48; 48; 60; 48;12 pp.; illus. annual reports on the activities of the society. Nos. 1, 6-8 not published. Brown paper wrappers, sl. darkened, ex-library with stamps on front wraps and pencil shelving labels. No. 9 with intact fold out “blue print,” and heavy center crease.

This nearly complete run, lacking no. 10, documents a lively public health campaign that spanned WWI. Illustrated throughout with graphs, charts and b/w reproductions of exhibition materials and photographs of lectures given in industrial and institutional settings. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society’s approach was comprehensive rather than strictly moralistic. The state-sponsored organization relied on exhibits, public lectures, elementary education, “checking the spread of falsehoods” largely through criminalizing quack advertising, and eventually, employing women to lead “mother’s meetings” and make house-to-house calls. Their efforts were seemingly quite successful, the 1919-20 report ranks Oregon with the lowest incidence of venereal disease within incoming US Army recruits in the nation.

Scattered holdings are recorded in OCLC, complete runs scarce.

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(Sexual Health) (Education) 11 educational pamphlets and nearly complete Journal of Social Diseases

(Sexual Health) (Education) A collection of 11 educational pamphlets published by the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis and The American Federation for Sex Hygiene, 1911-1914. Together with a nearly complete run of Journal of Social Diseases, 1911-1915.

A comprehensive and rare collection of early sex instruction and social hygiene materials from the the first social hygiene association in the United States. In 1905, New York dermatologist Prince Morrow founded The Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, it later changed its name to The American Federation for Sex Hygiene, and eventually joined with sister organizations in other states to form the American Social Hygiene Association. Seizing on the momentum of the growing public health movement, Morrow is recognized as an early and key proponent of sex instruction (sex hygiene) in schools. Believing that most parents were not qualified to provide medical and scientific instruction, Morrow’s organization sought to introduce modern, secular sex hygiene into public education through professional text-books, literature, and lectures.

Although some of the society’s arguments were based on contemporary scientific sexism and racism, Morrow believed medical misinformation and the sexual double-standard against women were dangerous impediments to understanding and prevention. This led the Society to hold men equally accountable for social diseases. Healthy sexual function required eliminating the demand for prostitution and pornography, not just the prostitute or pornographer.

By WWI, Morrow’s medical sex instruction movement had been joined to, and subsumed by, the moral purity movement, creating a new national sexual health agenda that partnered private associations and community groups with the US military and punitive federal policy. The partnership between ASHA (which was led by Charles Eliot, president-emeritus of Harvard, and counted Jane Addams and Julius Rosenwald among its board) and the US government led to policies that continued to stigmatize women (and incarcerate them). In one infamous example, El Paso made it a felony to infect someone with a venereal disease in 1918.

Physical copies of these early sexual health materials are rare in Worldcat and the market.

Comprising: Morrow, Dr. Prince A. Report on Progress; The Sex Problem: Social Diseases, Publicity, Sex Instruction, The Double Standard of Morality; and The Teaching of Sex Hygiene. New York, NY: Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis; The American Federation for Sex Hygiene, 1912. Three pamphlets, each stapled self wraps, The Sex Problem ex-library with stamps and pencil shelf-mark to front. Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis Educational Pamphlet Nos. 1-2, 4-7 (The Young Man’s Problem; Instruction in the Physiology and Hygiene of Sex for Teachers; The Boy Problem for Parents and Teachers; How My Uncle, The Doctor, Instructed Me in Matters of Sex; Health and the Hygiene of Sex for College Students; The Mother’s Reply. New York, NY: Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 1911-1914. 16-32 pp. each. These editions distributed by the Purity Educational League of North America (San Francisco). Ex-library with stamps and shelf-marks. Very Good. Bigelow, Maurice A. Sex-Instruction as a Phase of Social Education. New York: NY, American Federation for Sex Hygiene, 1913. Ex-library with stamps and shelf-marks. Good. Eliot, Charles W. Public Opinion and Sex Hygiene. New York: NY, American Federation for Sex Hygiene, 1913. Ex-library with stamps and shelf-marks. Good. Together with: The Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Journal of Social Diseases. Vols. II-IV. New York, NY: Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 1911-1913. Continued by: Journal of The Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Vols. V-VI. New York, NY: Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 1914-1915. 20 issues in two vols., cloth, original wrappers bound in. Ex-library stamps, spines with printed shelf-labels, else very good. Five of six volumes, a nearly complete run of the first American sexual hygiene journal.

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(Sex Work) Group of Nine American Sex Worker Zines and Magazines

(Sex Work) Group of Nine American Sex Worker Zines and Magazines, 1997-2019.

Various sizes, approx. 30-80 pp., profusely illustrated, all offering first-person commentary on the politics of prostitution and/or pornography. Most authors pseudonymous with limited publishing details. Scattered OCLC holdings, one unrecorded.

Comprising: Proof your man ain’t shit: Death to FOSTA & SESTA, 2019; Land of make believe and dress up: some of my experiences doing sex work in NYC as a queer anarchist, New York: 20-?; Danzine: an exciting quarterly for ladies in the ‘biz, No. 12, Portland, OR: 1997; Rocket Queen, Nos 1-2 (all published?), Asheville, NC: 2005-?; $pread [Spread], Vol. 1, Nos. 1-3, New York, NY: 2005. Together with a color promo card for the “2nd Sex Worker Film & Video Festival,” 2001.

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(Sexual Health) (Medical Advertising) Be Healthy

(Sexual Health) (Medical Advertising) (Graphic Design) Public Health Institute. Be Healthy. Chicago, 1937. Color enamel silkscreen? on tin?, 8-½ x 11 in., date printed at foot. Surface with minor pitting and discoloration, colors worn at edges, possibly from original mounting, small ripples at top and bottom edges, mounting holes at each corner.

Scarce ephemera of a non-profit medical organization that became the largest venereal disease clinic in the world and a test case for the ethics of medical advertising and the right to affordable health-care.

The Public Health Institute (PHI) was established in downtown Chicago in 1919 to cheaply diagnose and treat the epidemic of venereal disease. Its founders hoped to repeat the military’s successful model of curtailing disease during WWI through widespread publicity and testing. The board of trustees was composed of elite Chicagoan businessmen and philanthropists who added a management style rooted in business efficiencies and early industrial medicine. These efficiencies helped it to become solvent during its first year and by 1929 PHI was serving 1500-2000 patients a day at its three branches, including a south side location opened under pressure from black civic leaders.

Patients remained anonymous and no one was denied service because of inability to pay. Its profits were reinvested in other venereal disease programs, including direct support for the Illinois Social Hygiene League (ISHL) and a $100,000 renovation of Provident Hospital, the first African-American owned and operated hospital in the US.

The PHI’s relationship with ISHL and its director, Dr. Louis Schmidt, brought it notoriety when Schmidt was expelled from the Chicago Medical Society (CMS) for violating its ban on advertising. According to its own reports, the PHI not only advertised in daily newspapers but placed 25,000 posters in public toilets, factories, and streetcars. The CMS’s unanimous action against Schmidt and the Institute—based on how PHI’s advertising challenged the social and economic power of their monopoly—was publicly ridiculed, since it punished a charity that had healed thousands. The case brought attention to the increasing cost of medicine and inadequate health care for the lower classes, initiating a conversation about a universal right to health care that continues to this day.

The clever PHI advertising slogans were well-known from Chicago’s newspapers: “Wild Oats are Watered by Tears,” “Self-Treatment Won’t Cure ‘Social’ Diseases,” etc. The present example, “Be Healthy,” was printed in April 1937.

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Hand Book on Beauty [title from cover]

(Trade Catalogue - Cosmetics) (Human Hair) ​Winter, Mrs. J. C. Hand Book on Beauty [title from cover]. Syracuse, NY: [Zobel & Otis], 1894. 6 x 4-1/2 in., 16 pp.; illus. catalogue of beauty products, largely for the hair; in illus. stapled wrapper, nicked and chipped, a few small losses.

From half-title: “Mrs. J.C. Winter, manufacturer and dealer in Human Hair Goods and Fine Toilet Goods, Manicure Goods, Face Bleach, Dandruff Cure, Hair Tonic, Hair Restorer, Curling Fluid, Etc., Etc., Valuable Hints for the Toilet Table.” With introduction to Mrs. Winter’s career (including first prize coiffure at the New York State Fair, 1890, pictured) and her Madison Street emporium (depicted on rear wrap), followed by discussion of various proprietary products. Including an illustration of the newly invented hair dryer.

Not found in OCLC.

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España de abril 1931 a octubre 1934: C.N.T. / F.A.I.

(Anarchism) (Argentina) (Spain) [Comité Regional de Relaciones Anarquistas]. España de abril 1931 a octubre 1934: C.N.T. / F.A.I. [Buenos Aires, Argentina]: [Ediciones Comité Regional de Relaciones Anarquistas], [1934]. 8vo, 32 pp.; illus. stapled wrapper, small split at foot, chip to rear wrap, toned.

Describing anarchist and communist worker’s insurrections in Spain, the movement’s actions against fascism and capitalism, and arguing for the same in Argentina. OCLC finds no North American institutional holdings.

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Fourteen Italian Antifascist, Communist, and Revolutionary Socialist Party Leaflets

“Lavoratori Torinesi! L’ora dell’insurrezione popolare contro il nazifascismo e giunta ... Lo sciopero insurrezionale ad oltranza apra la via alla nostra liberazione! Viva il Socialismo!”

(Antifascism) (Socialism) Fourteen Italian Antifascist, Communist, and Revolutionary Socialist Party Leaflets, 1943-1945. Various sizes, most single-sided, four recto and verso, two on red papers, most good, with scattered fraying, creases, small chips, bent corners, and toning, one closed tear, one example much larger, creased with losses. Together with: Fronte Del Lavoro: Per un’Italia nuova del lavoratori. [3] pp. mimeograph party manifesto, dated September 2, 1943, sl. faded with small pencil annotations, possibly corrections; Lo Stato Moderno: Rivista di critica, politica, economica, e sociale. Anno 1, N. 1 (Luglio 1944). [Rome]: 1944. 8vo, 16 pp.; newsprint darkened; stapled wrapper, front with small stain and closed tear; and 3) Foglio Volante: Portato dalle Forze Aeree delle Nazioni Unite. No. 6. Np. Nd. ca. 1943. Single sheet of a French? Resistance aerial leaflet with solidarity messages for Italian workers from leaders of the trade union movement in France and Britain.

Leaflets calling for working-class action against Nazi-fascism in the German-occupied Italian Social Republic from communist, socialist, and revolutionary parties belonging to the National Liberation Committee coalition or the armed resistance movement: Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria, Partito d’Azione, Il Fronte della Gioventù (part of the Italian Communist Party [PCI]), Fronte degli Intellettuali (PCI?), and Partito Repubblicano Italiano.

With the exception of Foglio Volante and Lo Stato, most of these examples were presumably published clandestinely in Turin and environs. At least two published in the days following liberation, either celebrating the first postwar Labor Day (May 1) or insisting on a new democratic Italian republic to represent the working class.

No OCLC holdings found. A few similar leaflets in the Library of Congress holdings. Foglio Volante held only at the BNF.

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Group of Italian Resistance Bulletins and Handbills

(Clandestine Press) (Brigate Garibaldi) Group of Italian Resistance Bulletins and Handbills, and a Photograph, ca. 1943-45. [Rome, Turin, et al.]. Totaling thirteen items: two small handbills, printed recto and verso, the first “Ordine del Giorno N. 8 del Comando del distaccamenti e delle Brigate d’Assalto Garibaldi,” and the second, “Bollettino No. 12 Guerra Partigiana,” attributed to Il Comando delle Brigate d’Assalto Garibaldi del Piemonte, both ca. 1944, and a press? photograph of a fascist torture cell. Handbills lightly worn, good; photo center-creased and faded, with typed caption pasted recto, manuscript caption verso, fair. Together with ten mimeographed bulletins from wartime clandestine presses, most single sheet printed recto only, one example [4] pp., another [2] pp., stapled, all toned and fragile, most with creases from prior folds and edge wear, a few with small closed tears and chipping, two with manuscript annotations.

Texts discuss resistance operations in Turin and Northern Italy, the Brigate Garibaldi, partisan and labor actions, the activities of the Corpo volontari della libertà, the French resistance, and the Soviet Union/Eastern front. Some bulletins dated and attributed, including “Il Grido di Spartaco,” a clandestine Communist newspaper; “La Federazione Comunista Torinese”; “Il Costituendo Partito P.R.I.”; and “Il Comitato di Agitazione del Piemonte.”

OCLC locates no specific holdings of any of these items, though relevant archives exist at the Hoover and Library of Congress.

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(Clandestine Press) (Women) Italian Women’s Resistance Leaflets and Serials

(Clandestine Press) (Women) Gruppi di difesa della donna e per l’assistenza ai combattenti della libertà. Three handbills and a clandestine issue of Noi Donne. [Turin?]: n.d., ca. 1944-45. Sizes vary, from 8-¾ x 6-½ in. to 4 x 9-⅛ in.; all sl. toned, one with chipped edges. Together with Le Donne e la resistenza: Un documentario Noi Donne da conservare, per non dimenticare. Rome: Noi Donne, n.d. [ca. 1946]. Large 4to, [48] pp.; profuse b/w illus. from photographs, newsprint toned with small dampstain affecting most pages, pages numbered 16-61; stapled illus. color wrapper with red star pasted to front cover, worn at corners and spine.

Rare examples from the clandestine Piedmont presses of the Italian women’s resistance movement, Gruppi di defesa della Donna (Gddd). Led in Turin by Ada Gobetti, Gddd’s partisans risked their lives to produce antifascist and feminist literature in the German-occupied Italian Social Republic. They collaborated with and supported the Corpo volontari della libertà (CVL) through mutual aid activities including propaganda, industrial sabotage, and first aid. Some joined the CVL’s armed resistance, in the Brigate Garibaldi.

The present group includes calls to action against “nazi-fascisti” and a previously unidentified? example of the women’s movement serial, Noi Donne, which originated in Paris in 1937 in the antifascist exile community, and was reborn during the Italian resistance as a clandestine paper allied with the Gddd. Regional editions varied widely; most groups did not have access to presses so they brought mimeograph machines to kitchens and women’s shops, and printed during the night; this example probably issued by the Turin section, edited by Dina Ermini

After liberation, the Noi Donne editorial office was located in Rome under the auspices of the feminist organization Unione Donne Italiane. In the present group is the large format Noi Donne supplement Le Donne e la resistenza. The special edition tells the story of Italian women’s participation in the resistance through texts and photographs solicited by the editors from the partigiane themselves.

Gddd documents and early issues of Noi Donne are virtually unknown outside of Italian archives. Scholars have noted that individual print runs might range from 500 to 10,000 copies, and that possession of an issue (let alone the dangers of printing) could lead to deportation, torture, or death.

Three Gddd flyers are included in the Library of Congress archive of wartime European underground publications. We are unable to confirm any physical copies of Noi Donne from the 1940s in North American institutional collections.

See Marisa Rodano. “Introduction.” Noi Donne, 1944-1945: Ristampa. Rome: Editrice Cooperative Libera Stamp, 1978.

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Arquitectura i urbanisme

(Architecture) (Urbanism) (Spanish Second Republic) (Anarcho-Syndicalism) Associació d’Arquitectes de Catalunya; Sindicat d’Arquitectes de Catalunya. Arquitectura i urbanisme. [Primer Epoca] No. 1 (1931) - No. 4 (1933); [Segona Epoca] No. 1 (1934) - No. 2 (1934), No. 6 (1935) - No. 15 (1936); [Tercera Epoca] No. 16 (1937?) - No. 19 (1937). Barcelona, 1931-1937. 19 vols., [20 of 23 nos. issued, lacking Segona Epoca, Nos. 3-5], [30-76] pp., most approx. [36-50] pp.; profusely illustrated in b/w with limited use of color papers and inks beginning with No. 10; Primer Epoca, No. 1 with orig. introductory letter laid in, No. 14 loose but holding; in stapled color wrappers, Primer Epoca, No. 1 front sl. abraded at tail edge, Segona Epoca, No. 2 and No. 11, covers separated but present, No. 19, front covered darkened, spine chipped. Attribution changes to Sindicat d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, Nos. 13-19. Primer Epoca, Nos.1-3 also written as Any 1-3.

Near-complete run of the rare Catalonian architectural journal published by the Associació d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (AAC) during the Spanish Second Republic. The editors aimed to merge Northern European avantgardism and Mediterranean vernacular architecture with the Catalonian independence movement. Though aspects of this vision for a unified and autonomous Catalonian modernism had been present in the more conservative Noucentisme movement, they were reinvigorated by the establishment of the self-governing Generalitat de Catalunya in April, 1931.

In the serial’s three “epocas,” architecture and urbanism coincide with major political shifts in the Generalitat and the Second Republic. In the first exuberant phase, the editors differentiate themselves from the internationalism of the celebrated Grup d’Arquitectes i Tècnics Catalans per al Progrés de l’Arquitectura Contemporània (GATCPAC), led by Le Corbusier associate, Josep Lluís Sert. However, a review of Arquitectura i urbanisme (AU) reveals that its early years were deeply sympathetic to GATCPAC’s avantgardism. The AAC and GATCPAC worked closely on several initiatives, including architectural expositions and competitions, and a Congrés d’Arquitectes de llengua Catalana. Though AU offered more space for Catalonian issues and architects, there are clear links between the magazine’s graphics, urbanist policy, and emphasis on modern industrial materials and technologies, to those espoused in GATCPAC’s stylized serial, A.C. (Actividad Contemporánea). Both groups were invested in proving a natural relationship between the modern and Mediterranean popular culture.

The second phase of AU took place after the 1934 national elections brought a conservative majority to power; the new government suspended the Generalitat de Catalunya and violently crushed a worker’s rebellion in Asturia. The magazine adopted a larger format with increasing ads, arts reviews, illustrations, and nationalism, turning from internationalist to local solutions in design, decoration, and planning. This period of suppression radicalized many Catalonians, culminating in the elections of 1936 and the Popular Front. This revolution was also realized in AU, which was seized (incautaba) in issue No. 13 by a new Catalonian architect’s union, organized under the authority of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-UGT.

The magazine’s third era, Nos. 13-19, is credited to “El Comite” of the Sindicat d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, but the initial bylaws of the union are signed by Josep Torres Clavé, a principal member of GATCPAC, which seems to have assumed control of the magazine. Clavé was also the of A.C. In this final phase, the magazine prioritized the social mission of architecture, its moral and economic responsibilities, and principles of solidarity between various industrial workers’ unions and architects. Nos. 15-16/17 address the collectivization of construction, the municipalization of housing, and the impending total transformation of Catalonian society. The new editors call for monographic studies of social and human problems: sanitation, hospitals, and the urbanization of unhealthy neighborhoods.

The magazine undertook these monographic studies in Nos. 18 and 19, reviewing public health architecture and urban policy in France, Germany, the USA, and the USSR. Additionally these issues introduce the reorganization of architectural studies for revolutionary purposes in the Catalonian university system and provide further details and bylaws for the collectivization of the construction industry within the Generalitat de Catalunya. Probably authored by Clavé, these themes correspond to his editorial in the final number of AC, subtitled “Problèmes de la revolución.” No. 19 with color back wrapper advert for the Spanish translation of Upton Sinclair’s “No Passaran!”, published by the Generalitat’s propaganda commission in 1937.

Substantial runs of AU are rare to the market and institutionally. As of February 2020, we find four? North American OCLC holdings, all incomplete: Met, NYPL, UMich, Northwestern.

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Quattro Lustri di Attività dell’Impresa Ferrero & Grossi, Roma, MCMXII-MCMXXXII

(Architecture) (Italy) (Photography) (Fascism) Ferrero & Grossi. Quattro Lustri di Attività dell’Impresa Cav. Uff. Ferrero Carlo & Cav. Uff. Grossi Vittorio, Roma, MCMXII-MCMXXXII. Rome and Florence: 1932. Oblong presentation album, 13-⅛ x 10-½ in., 70 heavy card leaves: first leaf with gilt title recto and photograph of Vittorio Grossi verso, incl. Grossi’s dated manuscript dedication to an unspecified Italian municipality [Sede Podestarile], 15/8/32; followed by 69 leaves, each with a mounted photographic print recto and printed caption, print sizes vary slightly, most approx. 9 x 6-½ in., final third of leaves with minor uniform warp, approx. 6 examples with some discoloration at edges from dyed card mount, the rest VG to near fine. Cord-bound leather album, front cover gilt, spine beginning to split, heavily worn with some losses, esp. to rear board.

Comprehensive document of the revolutionary urban planning initiated by Italian fascists in Rome during the 1920s, and the diverse modernist architectural forms that supplanted many of the city’s densely built historical areas.

Rapid population growth during the 1920s and 1930s caused a housing crisis that led to unprecedented partnerships between Mussolini’s fascist government and Roman private construction companies, including Ferrero & Grossi. These public housing projects were coordinated by the Istituto Case Popolari (ICP; Institute of Popular Housing), led from 1925-1931 by the rationalist architect Innocenzo Costantini. Blocks of case popolari rose swiftly, creating new neighborhoods aimed at the huge influx of working class and lower-middle class residents, including thousands of new city employees (under the aegis of the Case dei Dipendenti del Governatorato di Roma, known as INCIS).

The speed of Roman redevelopment, often accompanied by the programmatic demolition (sventramento) of ancient districts, was celebrated as a critical aspect of the fascist revolution and its reconfiguration of modern, urban life. This album presents the significant contributions of one construction company to this effort, providing a survey of the period’s astonishing modernization and the vocabulary of vernacular and civic architecture in which it took place: case popolari for the working class, INCIS districts for the middle-class, villini and palazzini for the bourgeoisie, and monumental government buildings. These typologies of residential architecture further promoted the social segregation central to Mussolini’s fascist ideology.

The first quarter of the album addresses early, pre-fascist, ICP modernization projects in Rome’s rural outskirts—the infamous industrial and agricultural zones of the borgate, e.g. a school and sanitation center in Marcigliana. There are also a few examples from the Italian co-operative housing movement, including the Cooperativas Luigi Luzzati (named for the Jewish Prime Minister of Italy) and Tesoro Parioli.

The fascist era documentation begins with numerous rationalist ICP apartment blocks in various areas of Rome, lingering on several massive urban projects built by Ferrero & Grossi, including architect Dario Barbieri’s innovative redevelopment of Piazza Verbano, which housed nearly 10,000 people. The Verbano photos include a cornerstone ceremony with the King Vittorio Emanuele III, various stages of construction, and the inauguration by Minister Antonio Mosconi. Not all of these projects were groundbreaking formal experiments, but they were highly conspicuous alterations to the Roman built environment that delivered on the Mussolini’s promise of a new cityscape for a new society.

Photographs of Il Duce at the inauguration of an enormous governmental autopark further testify to the symbolic importance of urban development to the fascist revolution.

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An Investigation of the Needs and the Design of an Orbiting Space Station with Growth Capabilities

(Space Architecture) (Experimental Living) (Futurism) Dossey, John R. and Guillermo Trotti. An Investigation of the Needs and the Design of an Orbiting Space Station with Growth Capabilities: Final Report. Contract No. NASW 2776. [Houston, TX]: Rice University Space Station Study, 1977. 4to, [1], 44 pp. of text illus. with [57] full-page figures, bound throughout; in plastic comb binding, front and rear covers worn, beginning to separate.

A fascinating report to NASA addressing the challenge of developing a scalable space colony from initial outpost to urban community. The recommended architectural program, which offers surprisingly countercultural solutions, reveals the authors’ radical intellectual heritage. Dossey and Trotti trained under architect Howard Barnstone (Rothko Chapel; Rice University/Menil’s “Art Barn”) at the University of Houston and completed their thesis project, “Counterpoint—A Lunar Colony” (1974), under the supervision of Buckminster Fuller.

Their report investigates the futuristic possibilities of modular space architecture, and the role of both architects and social scientists (rather than just engineers or industrial designers) in providing solutions for long-term life in space. Inspired by “visionary urban design” models such as those by Paolo Soleri (architect of the experimental desert communities Cosanti and Arcosanti) they take on the “complex space environment” where “issues of transportation, ‘land use’, urban economics, density, public services, and so forth, become important problems.” Taking their study in an unorthodox direction, Dossey and Trotti, stress the importance of aesthetic stimuli during “prolonged confinements in a spatially limited environment.” Architectural methodologies, they suggest, are capable of addressing the aesthetic demands of space colonies by developing designs that can be adapted to human scale and using graphic and symbolic forms that “give identity to space.” The architect, understanding “how people act in certain kinds of space,” can design “areas of privacy, public contact, [...] and areas which encourage spontaneous activity and personal expression.”

With dozens of compelling drawings reproducing both interiors (farms, restaurants, theaters, hotels, farms, industrial facilities) and exteriors of the space colony, this volume summarizes and draws final conclusions from previous technical reports delivered to NASA. Trotti would later establish a firm (TAI) that continues to work closely with NASA and MIT on components related to space architecture.

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Arquitectura y Desarrollo Nacional: XIII Congresso Mundial de la UIA, Mexico

(Architecture) (Trueblood, Beatrice) [La Federación de Colegios de Arquitectos de la República Mexicana; Sección Mexicana de la UIA]. Arquitectura y Desarrollo Nacional: XIII Congresso Mundial de la UIA, Mexico [title from cover]. [Mexico]: 1978. 4to, 47 pp.; profuse b/w illus.; pictorial wraps, fore-corner bumped, resulting small crease affecting front wrap and succeeding pages.

Graphic design for modern Mexican architecture booklet by editor and designer Beatrice Trueblood, head of publications for the ‘68 Mexico Olympiad. This vol. prepared for an annual congress of the International Union of Architects, held in Mexico in 1978 with a focus on economic and socio-cultural impacts in contemporary architecture.

Includes conference schedule and an index of participating countries and architects. A few other publications from the congress are recorded in OCLC with limited institutional holdings, this one seemingly unrecorded.

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Veglia: Anarchica Mensile. Anno 1, No. 5 (Oct.-Nov. 1926) through Anno 2, No. 7 (Apr.-May 1927)

D’Andrea, Virgilia, Ed. Veglia: Anarchica Mensile. Anno 1, No. 5 (Oct.-Nov. 1926) through Anno 2, No. 7 (Apr.-May 1927). Paris: Imp. La Fraternelle, 1926-1927. Three issues, 4to, numbered continuously [97]-168 pp.; with b/w reproductions of various artworks and graphics throughout, toned and worn, with warping near staples; in stapled illus. wrpprs., with wear at corners and spine, No. 6 with lower fore-corner separated but present.

Virgilia D’Andrea (1888-1933) was a poet and leader of the Italian anarcho-syndicalist movement, Unione Sindacale Italiana, from 1919-1920, during the so-called “red years.” Along with Errico Malatesta and her lover Amando Borghi, she was imprisoned in 1921 as part of the government’s repression of their revolutionary working-class movement. In 1923, following Mussolin’s consolidation of power, she and Borghi fled into exile.

Settling in Paris, she continued organizing and writing. She published eight issues of Veglia, an irregular bi-monthly antifascist cultural magazine, to raise money for the anarchist community in exile and the Sacco and Vanzetti defense. In addition to her own impassioned introductory essays and poems, literary and artistic contributions to Veglia included those by well-known anarchists Felice Vezzani, Luigi Fabbri, and Albert Daenens, among others. No. 7 reproduces a letter written to D’Andrea by Nicola Sacco. Each issue ends with a summary of new subscribers and their locations in the United States and Europe, offering an unexpected geographic survey of Italian anarchist immigration.

The end of Veglia’s run coincided with D’Andrea’s move to the US, where she became a prominent antifascist and labor organizer until her death from cancer, in 1933.

Scarce. Scattered issues in five European libraries; OCLC records the only North American holding at Northwestern, incomplete.

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Fifteen Illustrated Handbills and Programs for Bullfights with Headlining Woman Matador

[Cruz, Juanita]. Fifteen Illustrated Handbills and Programs for Bullfights with Headlining Matador Juanita Cruz. Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain, 1933-1945. Most approx. 18-¾ x 8-½ in., largest 16-⅞ x 12-½ in., a few smaller, printed on various colored papers, most with worn edges, a few chipping with small closed tears or minor losses. Together with a handbill for Las Hermans Palmeño and a real photo postcard advertising torera Carmen Madrid.

Women were prohibited from performing as matadors when groundbreaking Spanish bullfighter Juanita Cruz made her debut in 1933 under special license. She later successfully sued the Republican government to abolish the discriminatory statute, ushering in a brief era of equality for women matadors in Spain. When the Civil War ended in 1938, Cruz was touring in South America. Franco quickly reestablished the ban on women matadors, and Cruz chose a life in exile where she continued as a celebrated headliner until she retired in 1946.

This collection spans almost her entire career, from one of her first outings as a matador in Málaga, in 1933, to her final season in Ecuador in 1945.

Two additional promotional items relate to famed women matadors from the Civil War period: Las Hermanas Palmeño (Enriqueta and Amalia) and Carmen Madrid.

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Cires á Cacheter, Goudrons pour Bouteilles, Méches Soufrées, Encres.

(Trade Catalogue) (Wax) (Wine) Cornu, E. Cires á Cacheter, Goudrons pour Bouteilles, Méches Soufrées, Encres. Edouard Cornu, Fournisseur du Ministère des Postes & Télégraphes. Paris: Imp. Charles Verneau, [1899-1900]. Folio, [19] pls.; frontispiece followed by 17 chromolithographic plates and a table of contents, some printed recto and verso; colors remarkably fresh with minor bumping to lower corner progressing to heavier creasing until the final color plate with a small loss, not affecting the image; bound in, but separated from, orig. stamped cloth portfolio, chipped at edges, lower corner bumped. Manuscript note from manufacturer to potential client tipped in, dated 1899 but changed by same hand to 1900.

Detailed plates advertise rainbow-hued sealing waxes for letters, packages, bottles, and champagne; sulfur wicks and powders for sterilizing wine barrels; and inks. The catalogue was produced by master arthouse printer Charles Verneau, the Parisian publisher of many famous posters, including most of Théophile Alexandre Steinlen’s oeuvre.

Edouard Cornu was the official supplier of waxes and inks to the Ministère des Postes & Télégraphes. The ministry had assumed control of the French telephone system when it was nationalized in 1889. The Cornu factory telephone, still a relative rarity in France in 1899, is advertised prominently on the portfolio cover and frontispiece. Many of the catalogue’s examples display Cornu’s trademark beehive, others with various winemaker, liquor (violette, grappa), and industry trademarks.

Rare. As of September 2019, not found in OCLC or the trade.

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Linoleum Cuts by Children of the Modern School

(Anarchist education) (Printing) Linoleum Cuts by Children of the Modern School. Stelton, NJ: Ferrer [Stelton] Colony, n.d. [ca. 1928-1929]. Portfolio: 12-¾ x 9-⅜ in.; prints approx. 3-½ x 3-½ in. on [32] 8-½ x 11 in.; index of children’s names and ages followed by [31] printed sheets as issued, most single plates, two with multiple prints; paper toned, some sheets with faint crease in upper corner, not affecting images, index and one print with 1/16 in. closed tears at fore-edge, one with small loss at edge, not affecting image. Orig. portfolio wrapper re-backed, housed in recent custom case.

Printmaking, typesetting, and printing were part of the revolutionary libertarian educational curriculum at the Ferrer Colony’s Modern School in Stelton, New Jersey (1915-1953). The school was established at the anarchist colony following the closure of the first iteration of the The Modern School in New York City (1911-1915). Based on the pedagogical theories of Francisco Ferrer and others who believed that public school had become a system of governmental control, historian Paul Avrich has written that the Modern School was founded on the idea that children should be learning “in [an] atmosphere of freedom and self-reliance.” The aim was to create, through a new kind of education, “a new culture, a new life, a new world.”

Arts and crafts were fundamental to this new culture, including music, dance, weaving, metal work, pottery and and printing techniques—initially taught to the children by Joseph Ishill (later of Oriole Press). From 1922-1935?, the students printed their own magazine, Voice of the Children, with the prominent claim “Linoleum cuts and stories are made by children of all ages with no assistance or suggestions of any kind by members of the staff.”

The present portfolio carries a similar statement on the index: “All work connected with this portfolio was done by children of the school.” One of the listed participants, Jimmy Dick Jr., was the son of the school’s co-principals, Jimmy and Nellie Dick, who returned to Stelton in 1928 to re-assume control of the school from Alexis and Elizabeth Ferm when individualistic libertarianism came into conflict with the desire for parents to have their children learn basic academic skills. Jimmy Jr.’s age is given as nine, dating the portfolio to 1928-1929.

The Modern School was proud of its demographics, bringing together local working-class and immigrant families with the Ferrer colonists, but despite an emphasis on class and ethnic diversity, a majority of the students were Eastern European Jewish associates of the early Ferrer Association founders, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Sexual and family relations at the colony were often untraditional; men and women lived together unmarried and their children, cared for communally, sometimes took their mothers’ surname. Several of the those indexed in the portfolio are related to women of Goldman’s circle, including Dora Keyser, Bertha Blackman Rolland, and Kate Blackman Wolfson.

Early printed ephemera from The Modern School comes to market infrequently, a copy of the portfolio is located in the Modern School papers at Rutger University special collections.

Avrich, Paul. The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1980.

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Kissing: the art of osculation, curiously, historically, humorously, and poetically considered

Manson, George. Kissing: the art of osculation, curiously, historically, humorously, and poetically considered. Brooklyn, NY: Union Book, 1888. 5-½ x 4-⅛ in., 103 pp.; small loss to forecorner on title page, stapled with orig. illus. wrapper present but with loss at spine, front cover separated, later tipped in to title-page, good.

Charming book on the history of kissing with hundreds of anecdotes including “how to kiss and how to receive a kiss,” “when you may kiss with impunity,” “men kissing each other [...],” “humorous stories of kissing in tunnels,” “kissing customs of different countries,” and “the kiss of death.” Makes “a nice little present for a lady.”

The illustrated wrapper by A.T. Lumley, with its uncommon depiction of two men kissing is not mentioned in 2 of the 3 existing OCLC records (Library of Congress, USC), and is not present in the final (UFL) copy.

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Techniques of Law Enforcement Against Prostitution: A Manual [...]

(Antiprostitution) (Law Enforcement) United States. National Advisory Police Committee to the Federal Security Administrator. Techniques of Law Enforcement Against Prostitution: A Manual for the Guidance of Enforcement Officers in Proceeding Against Prostitutes and Procurers. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1943. 6-3/16 x 4-5/16 in., 75 pp.; stapled brown wrapper, small mark on front wrap, else near fine.

A manual for “vigorous and intelligent police action,” “Not for general distribution,” sheds light on the criminalization of individual prostitutes in the 1940s. Gives tactical suggestions for arresting streetwalkers, sting operations on call girls and taverns, plainclothes assignments, and independent vice squads.

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And Men My Fuel …

(Burlesque) St. Cyr, Lili. And Men My Fuel … : The unique autobiography of the world’s most famous exotic, her six divorces and her seven even more bizarre experiences, but more important, her hidden desires and shocking values. Chicago: Novel Books, 1965. 8vo, 126 pp.; 24 pp. b/w “photo gallery”; pages somewhat toned, orig. color pictorial wrapper with rear wrap creased, very good.

Renowned burlesque and striptease dancer Lili St. Cyr’s inventive use of exotic props and theatrical staging (e.g. making love to a parrot) were matched by an unusual amount of drama in her offstage life. In addition to her six marriages she claimed to have had 10 abortions and an affair with Marilyn Monroe.

Uncommon institutionally.

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How We are Defending the Health of Our Soldiers and Sailors: 309 Houses of Shame Closed

(Antiprostitution) (California) (Socialism) Hichborn, Franklin and L.D. Bohnett. Five Informational Leaflets: Redlight Abatement Acts Prove Effective in Other States; Segregation Does Not Segregate and Regulation Does Not Regulate; Source of the Opposition to the Redlight Abatement Act; State Government by Perjury and Forgery; The California Redlight Abatement Law: It’s Provisions and Purpose. San Francisco, CA: Campaign Committee for the Redlight Abatement Bill, 1914. Five leaflets, each approx. 6-⅜ in. x 3-⅜ in., 4, 6, 6, 8, and 8 pp. Together with Franklin Hichborn, Answers to Arguments … Against the Redlight Abatement Act, [California]: n.p., [1914] 8 pp. Most with small ex-libris stamp from the California Commonwealth Club and penciled shelf labels or scattered other marks or edgewear, a couple of small closed tears. Good.

Propagandist description of the controversy arising from California’s Red Light Abatement Act, a.k.a. the Bohnett-Grant Act. The Act was signed into law in April, 1913, but was contested by a statewide voter referendum held in November 1914, where it was affirmed. Like other Red Light Abatement laws, it ended segregated “redlight districts” and transformed public nuisance law to allow the government to take action against landlords whose property was used for brothels or “lewdness.” Importantly it also allowed for any resident citizen of the state to “maintain an action” against a specific property, empowering communities to act directly, without involving law enforcement.

Many high-profile supporters of the Act were Reformists and socialists. The leaflets here are mostly written by journalist Franklin Hichborn, an associate of prominent reformer John Randolph Haynes and his suffragist wife, Doris Haynes. Hichborn takes aim directly at prostitution’s profiteers and the link between capital and sex. One pull quote, from a municipal judge in Portland, OR, sounds almost contemporary in its appeal to move away from “criminal prosecutions, because [they] are usually directed at the pawn in the system while the real culprit, the man who knowingly permitted the use of his property for immoral purposes … is allowed to go unwhipped.”

Together with:

(Antiprostitution) (California) (WWI) State Law Enforcement and Protective League. How We are Defending the Health of Our Soldiers and Sailors: 309 Houses of Shame Closed. San Francisco: State Law Enforcement and Protective League, 1918. Trifold pamphlet [6] pp.; illus. from photos, two small closed tears, edges worn, one small repair?

Exemplary and rare document of the overheated rhetoric in the fight against prostitution and its special urgency during wartime. The League’s purpose is declared to be the protection of men in service and purity of home, primarily through “suppression of the vice exploiter” and “rehabilitation of the vice victim.” The pamphlet is primarily a report on legal actions brought under the Redlight Abatement Act. Seven recently closed “dens of vice” in the San Francisco Bay area are illustrated next to the descriptions of hundreds of others, and evidence of “white slave” trafficking. Not found in OCLC.

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Carte de Visite

[Goodwin, Mrs. R. A.]. Carte de Visite of an Unknown Woman. St. Johnsbury, VT: ca. 1875-1880. Albumen print mounted to card, 4-⅛ x 2 in., backmark of Mrs. R. A. Goodwin.

The photographer, Mrs. Goodwin, operated her business in St. Johnsbury, VT, as listed in Walton’s Vermont Register, 1877, p. 141. Also inscribed recto in pencil is the name “Herbert J. Shaw,” a contemporary St. Johnsbury resident. Subject unidentified.

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Emanciparea Femeei

(Anarchism) (Feminism) Mușoiu, Panait. Emanciparea Femeei. Bucharest: Marinescu & Şerban, 1899. 6-¾ x 4-¼ in., 79 pp.; in printed wrapper, rear adverts for other Mușoiu books and translations (incl. the first Romanian trans. of Marx’s Communist Manifesto), wrapper smudged with small mark from a paperclip to top edge, pages largely uncut, toned and brittle but still very good.

Early Romanian feminist manifestos by author, publisher, and leader of the Romanian anarchist-syndicalist movement. Mușoiu’s work was overlooked in histories of European anarchism until 2013, when the first major monographic study of his life and philosophy was published (Martin Veith, Unbeugsam: Ein Pionier des rumänischen Anarchismu). These papers were radical statements of women’s equality at a time when Romanian women lacked basic legal and political standing.

OCLC finds a single holding worldwide, none in North America.

ROM536

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Press Photograph of Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael

[Transgender] [Crime]. Carmichael, Geraldine Elizabeth. Press Photograph. Black and white print, sheet: 8 ⅛ x 10 ¼ in.; 1977. United Press International (UPI) caption recto, stamped verso “Filed May 18, 1977.”

Geraldine “Liz” Carmichael, aka Jerry Dean Michael, founded the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation to produce three-wheeled, futuristic high-efficiency cars. She defrauded investors of more than $3 million dollars before the authorities revealed her history of criminal behavior and shut down the company. This photograph is taken from her trial and the caption reveals the sensationalist news coverage of her trans identity in which her financial and gender “cons” are conflated.

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Tōkyō kangyō hakurankai jimu hōkoku jōkan

[Expositions] Tokyo Prefecture [Tōkyōfu]. Tōkyō kangyō hakurankai jimu hōkoku jōkan [Tokyo Industrial Exposition Report, Vol. 1]. Tokyo: Tōkyōfu, Meiji 42 [1909]. 4to, 331 pp.; profusely illus. with b/w plates reproducing photographs of the exposition and architectural and engineering plans, including approximately 30 folding plates, reproducing site plans, photographs, and pavilion elevations and floor plans, some with color, light foxing throughout; in embossed wrapper, sunned with foxing.

The first volume of a two-part governmental report on the Tokyo Industrial Exposition, 1907. This volume surveys the overall operations and organization of the exposition, with maps and plans for the spatial arrangement of the pavilions in Ueno Park, each building represented photographically and in architectural plans, with further interior plans describing use and displays. The exhibition configurations provide granular information about how the organizers visually communicated a nationalistic narrative about modern, industrial Japan as it entered into a period of colonial expansion. This westernized and modern self-representation (most of the main exhibition buildings were stylistically western) differed greatly from Japanese pavilions at the previous century’s World Fairs, where traditional arts and crafts were prioritized.

Although not technically an international exposition, foreign products and processes were featured, including Japan’s second Ferris Wheel (first exhibited in Osaka a year earlier), and a Crystal Pavilion which became the target of Korean protests and was eventually removed.

Uncommon documentation of a major industrial exposition. OCLC locates no institutional holdings outside of Japan.

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Kurumaisu no me: Suji jisutorofī-shō no kodomo no shibun to shashin-shū

[Photobook] [Muscular Dystrophy] Kurumaisu no me: Suji jisutorofī-shō no kodomo no shibun to shashin-shū [Photographs and poems by children with Muscular Dystrophy]. Tokyo: Nishitaga Hospital Association, 1971. 8vo, [102] pp.; illus. throughout from b/w photographs, most full- or double-page spreads; stapled illustrated wrapper, detached, else very good.

The book offers an uncomfortable look inside a Japanese MD sanitarium from the perspective of patients for whom “the camera is already heavy.” These closed wards were often the only long-term treatment option before educational integration and financial support for home care were legally required in the 1990s.

Including short contributor bios and an introduction by the novelist Tsutomu Minakami. OCLC records one copy at the National Diet Library.

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FUK: The Underground Dating-Service.

FUK: The Underground Dating-Service. New York, NY: FUK/Underground Enterprises, ca. 1970. [4] pp.; folded questionnaire, illus. wrpps; worn with some small marks and creases, good.

Otherwise unrecorded countercultural matchmaking questionnaire for “Turned-On People Only!” Questions about sexual preferences mingled with political ones (“Do you expect another American Revolution? When? What are you doing to promote it?”) and drugs (“How many times have you tripped? Have you come down yet?). Acceptable occupations (“if any”) were limited to “a) Artist b) Writer c) Musician d) Dealer e) Revolutionary f) Panhandler g) Student.”

Published during the Vietnam War draft years, per question no. 33 “Males: What did you do to evade the draft? ___________ If you got taken anyway, give this application to some horny Viet Cong.”

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Cabinet Card of Louise Michel

[Michel, Louise]. Cabinet Card of Louise Michel. Paris: Albert Capelle, ca. 1890. Albumen print mounted to heavier card; overall: 6-½ x 4-¼ in. Slightly faded, very good. Michel’s name inscribed in blue crayon, verso.

Vintage photograph of the revolutionary feminist who led the Montmartre Women’s Vigilance Committee during the Paris Commune, earning the nickname “Red Virgin of Montmartre.”

Transported to New Caldonia following the end of the Commune, Michel politics further radicalized. She was pardoned in 1880 and returned to France where she became a leader in European anarchist circles. Her books and lectures inspired the next generation of anarchist activists, including Emma Goldman.

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Ritratto di donna: Tina Modotti [Signed Association Copy]

[Modotti, Tina]. Vidali, Vittorio. Ritratto di donna: Tina Modotti [Signed Association Copy]. Milan: Vangelista, 1982. 8vo, 117 pp.; b/w pls., color illus. wraps, near fine. Author’s dated gift inscription to half-title.

Illustrated biography of the famed Italian photographer by her longtime partner, the Soviet operative Vittorio Vidali. Vidali was the mastermind (and possibly the killer) behind the 1929 assassination of Julio Antonio Mella, a Cuban revolutionary and Modotti’s lover. Modotti and Mella were walking together in Mexico City when he was was murdered, and although official reports concluded Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado ordered the killing, intraparty testimonials have always claimed that it was Stalin’s first move against Trotsky in Mexico.

Modotti was swept up in the investigation and deported from Mexico in 1930. She traveled to meet Vidali in Berlin and they worked as clandestine Stalinist agents in Germany, the USSR, and Spain before finally returning to Mexico at the end of the Spanish Civil War. She died a few years later under suspicious circumstances; Diego Rivera maintained that Vidali killed her.

Gift inscription from the author to Robert “Bob” Colodny (1915-1997), professor and former member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Colodny survived a shot to the head during the Spanish Civil War, and was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1961 during one of its final anti-Communist investigations. Dated: March 23, 1982.

An uncommon chronicle of the lesser-known, second half of the artist’s life, including Vidali’s own account of Mella’s assasination, with an important American association. OCLC locates 5 US holdings.

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Saluda a Méjico

[Confederación Nacional del Trabajo; Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores]. Saluda a Méjico: Two Posters. [Madrid?, Spain]: ca. 1936-1939. Each sheet approx. 15 x 10-⅞ in.; colors fresh with minor edge-wear and a few pinholes not affecting images, very good.

Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas assumed a huge domestic political risk in his support of the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Despite widespread public opposition to the Republican cause, Cárdenas equated his own revolutionary project with the Spanish one; Mexico sent overt military and financial aid and also smuggled arms in direct contravention to the embargo placed by the London Committee of Non Intervention (1936). Historians have claimed that the Republican loss in the Civil War was a turning point in Mexico’s own politics and set the stage for a strong conservative turn after 1940.

But many Mexican workers, intellectuals, artists, and soldiers embraced the Frente Popular coalition of unions, communist and anarchist parties. They volunteered in the war and became passionate supporters of the thousands of exiles who fled to Mexico when it ended.

Propaganda depicting the evolving war-time relationship between Spain and Mexico is rare. We find no examples in the trade or in institutional collections.

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(Brujería) [La] Historia de la Curación de Antigua de San Pablito Pahuatlan, Pue. 10 Agosto de 1975

(Brujería) [La] Historia de la Curación de Antigua de San Pablito Pahuatlan, Pue. 10 Agosto de 1975. [cover title]. [Mexico]: ca. 1975-1981. SIZE, [28] leaves; off-white amate with manuscript explanations of magical rituals in black ink, most with dark amate cut-out figures of deities and demons, known as muñecos, odd pages numbered; bound or re-bound in amate wrapper with title and date in pencil on upper cover, near fine.

The Otomí village of San Pablito is famous for its brujería traditions and the preservation of prehispanic paper-making techniques. Shamans (a.k.a. brujos and curanderos) perform ceremonies for sick or cursed persons using cut-out paper figures (muñecos) representing spirit entities drawn from both indigenous and Christian mythos. Before encountering the Otomí prehispanic papers (called amate, from the Nahuatl āmatl) and their magical uses in the early-20th century, anthropologists believed that traditional paper-making had disappeared in Mexico.

In 1975, a well-known San Pablito brujo, Alfonso Garcia Tellez, made the first documented manuscript testimonial of the Otomí paper-based magical practices, “HISTORIA DE LA CURACION DE ANTICUA [sic] DE SAN PABLITO PAHUATLAN PUE.” In it he described the shamanic rituals for various maladies (enfermedades) next to mounted examples of his muñecos. His texts were reportedly dictated to his daughter(s), since he could not write in Spanish, and were gathered in a leporello-style codex in front of the anthropologist Ferdinand Anders. Soon after, at least two other San Pablito brujos also produced manuscripts with muñecos, closely following Garcia Tellez’s format. European and US Bibliographic scholarship has focused on separating the “original” signed versions by Garcia Tellez from these “imitations.” A few of the manuscripts made their way to Mexico City tourists markets in the late 1970s, a few others were collected by anthropologists (including this example). Dating them is problematic because the covers often present with matching manuscript dates from August 1975 or 1978, although at least two are dated as late as 1981.

The present example shares the date and partial title of Garcia Tellez’s first manuscript. It describes the shamanic rituals and their associated gods and offerings and includes approx. 28 muñecos entities in dark amate paper. It differs slightly from other examples, most notably in spelling and the order of the spirits. Every fourth leaf includes a section of joined paper that could be material evidence for it having been created as a leporello (in imitation of prehispanic codexes like the Garcia Tellez examples) and rebound, or it may have been produced as a folio (in imitation of other brujo manuscripts).

Recent Mexican scholarship has called into question earlier bibliographic interest in identifying the “true” San Pablito manuscripts (see Martin, 2014) versus those that were made as imitations. Given that none of the brujos are known to have written Spanish or to have created these spell-books before the mid-1970s, none of the manuscripts are unmediated representations of an original, pre-contact religious practice. On the contrary, each was produced for a commercial and secular market; instead of trying to distinguish the “real’ vs “fake” manuscripts, ethnographers are now creating a correspondence to record all the variations and compare them.

Thus, their value as indigenous, magical testimonies lies not in their singularity, but in these variants: each an artifact of the evolving shamanic practices existing in the community—and that community’s intentional self-presentation to a larger (secular) world.

Martin, Sandra. Historia de la Curación: Antonio López M. Mexico: [Adugo Biri, un proyecto de UNAM], 2014.

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Guía de Exposiciones: Mayo; Junio; and Julio. México 68: Programa cultural de la XIX Olimpiada

Comité Organizador de los Juegos de la XIX Olimpiada. Guía de Exposiciones: Mayo; Junio; and Julio. México 68: Programa cultural de la XIX Olimpiada. México, D.F.: 1968. 3 vols., square 8vo, 71; 65; 67 pp.; profuse b/w illustrations of contemporary Mexican art; in color wraps with design attributed to Lance Wyman and Bob Pellegrini; color wraps sl. toned with edge-wear and a few creases.

The ‘68 Olympic Committee’s cultural program sponsored a series of art gallery guides for México City. Issued monthly from April-December (with the exception of the October-November double issue), the guides introduced visitors to contemporary Mexican and Latin American art in private and public venues. B/w plates reproduce works by Julio Le Parc, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Angela Gurria among others.

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Diccionario de ideas

[Rojo, Vicente. (Illustrator)]. Bontempelli, Massimo. Pacheo, José Emilio, Trans. Diccionario de ideas. México, D.F.: Libreria Madero, 1962. Small 4to, [14] leaves; 11 full-page color pls., one corner chipped, final leaf, pages sl. toned; in orig. decorative wraps, sunned, with small shelf sticker.

Librería Madero was founded in Mexico City in 1939 by an exiled Spanish Republican, Tomás Espresate. In the early 1950s, Espersate and his partner, Eduardo Naval, opened a small press, later directed by the Mexican painter and graphic designer Vicente Rojo. Librería Madero became well known for its fine press and art editions.

This example is one of a series of annual limited editions produced by Rojo—who was responsible for the illustrations and typography—and presented to friends of the press as a New Year’s gift. Evidently the eminent Mexican poet, Pacheco, was often a collaborator on these projects and here he provides the translation for Bontempelli’s brief text, which had recently been discovered in his papers at the time his death in 1961.

Rojo described this end-of-the-year commemoration: Cada una era diferente a la anterior, lo que me permitía una vez más (con la complicidad anónima de José Emilio Pacheco), buscar nuevos divertimentos visuales. (Entre paréntesis quiero aclarar que en el diseño gráfico, como en la vida, el humor me parece indispensable.)

OCLC records no US holdings.

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Primer Bienal de la Habana ‘84: Catalogo General

(Fanny Rabel) Museo Nacional de Cuba and Centro Wifredo Lam. Primer Bienal de la Habana ‘84: Catalogo General. Havana, Cuba: [Ministerio de Cultura], 1984. 4to, 318 pp.; incl. 249 pp. of b/w reproductions of the works in the biennial, together with artist index and bios, and exhibition statement; in color pictorial wraps, lightly worn, spine cracked but sturdy. Ownership inscription in pen, Fanny Rabel.

The first Cuban biennial catalogue is a comprehensive guide to Latin American art in the early 1980s. This copy possibly belonged to Mexican muralist Fanny Rabel, represented in the exhibition.

OCLC locates fewer than 10 copies in North American institutions.

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Once Esculturas

Cabrera, Geles. Once Esculturas. Catalogue for an exhibition held at Galeria “Arte Moderno,” México, May 26-June 15, 1950. Small 8vo, [10] leaves; 11 reproductions of the sculptures in the exhibition with index, preceded by short intro., partially removed price sticker on tp; in orig. stapled wrapper, toned and neatly splitting at spine, but holding.

Cabrera (b. 1929) overcame academic hostility to become one of the most important sculptors of her generation. This rare, early catalogue documents her second(?) solo exhibition which took place shortly after her return from Cuba, where she won first prize at the 1949 Salón de Bellas Artes, Havana. Paul Westheim contributed the catalogue introduction and crucial critical support at this juncture. In the 1970s, Cabrera was a founding member of the first Mexican Land Art collective, GUCADIGOSE.

Not recorded in OCLC.

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Album monográfico del Centro Educacional Felipe Carrillo Puerto

(Architecture) (Neo-Mayan) [Amábilis, Manuel and Max]. Album monográfico del Centro Educacional Felipe Carrillo Puerto [cover title]. [Mérida, México]: Zamna, 1945. Oblong 4to, [59] leaves printed recto only; 36 full-page b/w pls. and 16 full-page color pls. with descriptive captions, 7 leaves with only text, all with tissue guards, toned, else very good; orig. wrapper, creased and worn, fore-edges foxed.

Presentation album celebrating the inauguration of a post-revolutionary educational complex, unusual in its integrated design which included: classrooms, a public concert hall, sports fields, 8 gardens, mechanical and wood workshops, an experimental farm, a library, a kindergarten and a children’s theatre. The center was named after an assassinated Yucatan politician and revolutionary hero.

The influential architect, Manuel Amábilis, was known for his Neo-Mayan prize-winning design of the 1929 Mexican pavilion at the Latin American Exposition in Sevilla. He embraced Mayan and Toltec decoration and supported pre-hispanic architectural forms, albeit reimagined for the post-revolutionary period: “The Revolution has transformed Art into an apostle [...] the artists need to express themselves in an [...] accessible language [...] that is appropriate for the American idiosyncrasy and soul. This will only be achieved by going back to traditions, to legends, to the customs of our people and being inspired by the surrounding nature.” See Amábilis’s La arquitectura precolombina (1956), pp. 30–31; trans. Luis Carranza in Architecture as Revolution (2010), p. 96.

The school’s design displays his later efforts to marry these traditional forms and popular arts to functionalism: building materials were local, murals were done by a Mayan artist, Miguel Tzab, and the furniture was built by prisoners at the Penitenciaria Juárez, Mérida. These aspects are all documented in the album, with an entire section of colored plates describing the symbolism of various mural cycles and painted decorations.

The building’s site, in the poorest area of Mérida, was criticized at the time of construction. It was used for as a school and community center for thirty years but was eventually abandoned and then demolished in 1990.

Despite wear to front wrap, a rare, thorough, and well-preserved document of an important piece of regional postrevolutionary architecture, now destroyed.

OCLC lists one institutional holding, the Biblioteca Nacional de México.

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Album del Primer Gran Baile Debutantes de la Ciudad de México

(Debutantes) [Comité Organizador]. Album del Primer Gran Baile Debutantes de la Ciudad de México [cover title]. México, D.F.: [Impresiones Modernas], 1965. 4to, [78] pp.; 26 pls., b/w, or a repeated color logo where images were lacking, reproducing debutante portraits with biographies on facing page; pink and white cloth, bumped and worn, small gouges and other irregularities, interior near fine. No. 81 of 200 examples.

Fascinating artifact of Mexican high-society during and the authoritarian era of President Diaz Ordaz. Lengthy biographic texts describe the lives and achievements of Mexico’s wealthiest young women: the daughters of ambassadors, generals, doctors, judges, etc. Many of the women are musicians and philanthropists who studied at least partially in the United States or Europe, including one nuclear physicist and a writer. President Diaz Ordaz and his wife presided over the ball, modeled after similar traditions in Europe.

Not recorded in OCLC, none on market.

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OPTICA

Meade, Javier [sic] and Carolyna. OPTICA. Mexico, D.F.: Taller Grafico Meade, 1978. 4to, [18] color offset and silkscreen(?) plates; printed recto and verso from images by the Meades with texts by “Carlosol Meade” and “Hastatrás Denada,” near fine; loose as issued in orig. portfolio, also printed recto and verso, somewhat sunned with small closed tear at folded fore-edge. Edition of 500.

Vibrant images and mystical descriptions of Mexico at the end of the Dirty War. The journalistic photos, psychedelic palette, and metaphysical texts suggest solidarity and correspondence between rural and urban Mexican experiences. The authors’ poetic texts cover ecology, labor unions and rights, and state violence. A number of graphic choices reference indigenous traditions, including the plates’ pictographic numbering system.

Xavier Meade was a designer at El Arquitecto, an arts and architecture magazine in Mexico from 1977-1978, he also ran his own graphic studio and press in Distrito Federal from 1975-1978.

Not found in OCLC.

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Tamiahua

Gryj Freund, Leon and Leonides Guadarrama Jimenez. Tamiahua. Thesis Profesional, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura. México, D.F.: [1954]. Oblong 4to, 117 pp.; illus. include maps, graphs, elevations and plans, some folding, a few in color; pictorial card wraps, worn, fore-edges foxed. Dated gift inscription from Guadarrama to an engineer, Alberto Barocio.

Guadarrama designed one Mexico City’s most iconic modern buildings, the Museum of Natural History (1964) in Chapultepec Park. It was part of the huge urban renewal project leading up to the 1968 Olympics and its ten futuristic concrete domes, inspired by celestial vaults, were recently restored. Gryj also played a major part in CDMX’s development, as the head of Unidad de Planeación de Desarrollo Urbano (Transportation) from 1972-1976 and more recently, as the director of urban planning for the re-development of Hipódromo.

Their thesis project involved proposals for Tamiahua, a small Gulf town (16,500 inhabitants “profundo mestizaje del indio, blanco, y negro”) lacking modern infrastructure and social services. At the center of the plan is a building for the fishing cooperative that was its main industry, but there are also proposals for a medical center and schools, in keeping with the government’s anti-poverty and opportunity programs.

Not found in OCLC.

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Escuelas Tecnico-Practicas en el Distrito Federal

(Urban Planning) (Education) Gutierrez Rodarte, Sergio. Escuelas Tecnico-Practicas en el Distrito Federal. Examen Profesional, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura. México, D.F.: [1959]. Oblong 4to, approx. [70] leaves.; leaves printed recto only, most with illustrations: graphs, maps, architectural plans, equations, etc., toned; pictorial wrapper, worn.

Research on the socio-economic problems of access to post-secondary education; particularly geographic distribution of schools and the relevancy of component programs for modern labor forces.

Unrecorded in OCLC.

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El Movimento Estridentista

List Arzubide, Germán. El Movimento Estridentista. Xalapa, Veracruz; Mexico: Ediciones de Horizonte, [1926/1927]. First edition. 8vo, 106 pp.; profusely illus., a few in color, incl. 2 color pls., tipped in; missing orig. wrappers, half-title with small loss at top-edge, first and last pages heavily foxed.

A reading copy of this important illustrated chronicle of Estridentista, the avantgarde Mexican arts movement. Even without wraps, Arzubide’s history is a beautifully realized book. Scores of vibrant illustrations are accompanied by descriptions of Estridentista founder, Manuel Maples Arce, the movement’s headquarters at El Café de Nadie in Mexico City, and its aesthetic principles.

As described by the International Center for the Arts of the Americas, “a good number of the illustrations [...] are unique, given the loss of a large portion of the works by the painters and engravers associated with the group, especially oil paintings.”

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España 1936-1965

[Horna, Kati] Comite de Ayuda al Pueblo Español. España 1936-1965. [Mexico]: [1964]. Small 8vo, 7-⅜ x 5-⅝ in., [94] pp.; illus. daily agenda and poems, with 7 b/w pls., printed recto and verso, incl. 10 reproductions of photographs by Horna; final page reproduces pinback worn by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during a protest against the Spanish Pavilion at the World’s Fair, 1964; in plastic comb binding with glossy pictorial wrappers by Horna, worn at binding and fore-edges, with creases; interior very good.

Thirty years after the end of the Guerra Civil, exiled Republicans and sympathizers continued to agitate in Latin America and Europe for an end to the Franco regime. This agenda calls for daily solidarity with “the sacrifices and suffering” of the heroic Spanish people still fighting against “Nazi-fascism,” particularly political prisoners and their families. The calendar includes radical Spanish and Latin American poetry, including work by Garcia Lorca, Machado, Neruda, Rejano, et al., and is illustrated with wartime photos by Hungarian-born Mexican photojournalist Kati Horna (1912-2000). Horna worked for a number of anarchist magazines in Madrid before she was hired in 1937 by the Republican government to document the war. After two years in Spain she was forced to flee to Paris and then Mexico where her negatives remained largely unseen until the fall of Franco in 1979.

Since that time her unusual subject matter and passionate representation of ordinary lives in communities far from the frontlines (e.g. women and children, wounded soldiers at home) have re-established her reputation alongside her lifelong friend, Robert Capa. She lived in Mexico for the rest of her life, where she contributed to a number of anarchist publications and became a key member of a group of expat artists, including Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. Only recently rediscovered, Horna’s published work before 1979 is scarce. The first major publication of her Spanish Civil War-era work was in 1992, almost thirty years after this calendar appeared.

Unrecorded in OCLC.

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La voz infinita and La cenicienta del jazz

Repetto Baeza, Letizia. La voz infinita. Valparaíso, Chile: Roma, 1928. Oblong 8vo, 91 pp.; illus. pls. by Raul del Solar, sl. toned with intermittent light foxing; paper wrappers a bit foxed and bent at forecorner. Together with: Repetto Baeza, Letizia. La cenicienta del jazz. Valparaíso, Chile: Roma, 1930. Oblong 8vo, 96 pp.; cover design and author’s ex-libris (printed on p. 89) by Andrés Zampieri; decorative wraps, corners and spine bumped with creases to covers. Both signed and dedicated in ink from the author to a “Mme.”

Repetto Baeza published her first novel, La voz infinita, at the age of 18 and her second, La cenicienta del jazz at 20. The “femininity” of her writing was praised in the Chilean and European press, as was her youth and beauty. However, her fiction was quickly eclipsed by her work as a journalist. Her reputation grew when she married Luis Beltrán, the ambassador to Spain. Despite her early collaborations with leftist Chilean intellectuals and artists, she supported the Nationalists during the Civil War. Her first child died during the bombing of Madrid and she later wrote a book about her experiences during the revolutionary period. Repetto Baeza’s admiration for Spain, including a romantic appreciation of Arabic culture, arts, and philosophy, made her an unlikely but vocal supporter of Arab immigration in Chile after WWII.

OCLC finds only one North American holding for La voz, two for La cenicienta.

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Les Femmes de l’Avenir (all published)

(Women) Les Femmes de l’Avenir (all published). Nancy, France: A. Bergeret, 1902 [postmarks 1902-1909]. 20 postcards, each, 5-1/2 x 3-5/8 in., various editions, in numbered sequence as follows: conscrit, garde champêtre, gendarme, pompier, petit tambour, zouave, marin, sous-officier, sous lieutenant, général, étudiant, cocher, jockey, maitre d’armes, rapin, journaliste, avocat, docteur, maire et depute; this set with no. 17 misnumbered as no. 7. Some postmarked, others unused, many addressed to women (Mme or Mlle), some with writing recto, foxing, or dirt, one with small loss at corner.

In Bergeret’s imagination, “women of the future” will do the same jobs as men: soldiers, mayors, doctors, jockeys, journalists, artists, lawyers and so on. When images of these postcards went viral in 2015, some commentators wrote about Bergeret’s “progressive vision.” As lovely as that sounds, Bergeret was more likely to have capitalized on the contemporary passion for picture postcards.

Regardless of Bergeret’s intentions, the women are jaunty, slightly sexy, talismans of a future that actually came to be.

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[Stokes Patent Engraving Machine]

[Stokes Patent Engraving Machine]. [London?], [1851?]. Engraving(?) with ink and gouache drawing, sheet: 14-3/8 x 8-3/8; inscribed in pencil verso, “Anaglyptograph / 1851 Exhibition / JS Harrison Son,” with typed caption mounted to top edge of leaf reading “Inscribed at back ‘Anaglytograph [sic]. 1851 Exhibition. T.S. Harrison Snr.’” Sheet creased where folded, v. light staining and rubbing, right edge nicked.

Bamber Gascoigne writes that the anaglyptograph was invented in the 1820s as a “fanciful extension of the ruling machine.” It was used primarily to copy or “convert” bas-relief surfaces (mostly medals or coins) into printed lines. The anaglyptograph, also known as a numismatic engraver in France, required a needle to be passed over the medal’s surface; an anaglyptographer generally worked with a plaster mold of the original object. The British version was often called a Bate’s machine, after its patentholder. The 8th edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica mentions that when Mr. Bate died, the art was taken up by Mr. Stokes, “who carried the invention to such excellence as to produce copies from entire statues.”

With so much scholarship about 19th-century reproductive technologies and the relationship between science and art, the possibility of a machine that converted sculpture to data would neatly prefigure the 21st-century 3D digital scan. And indeed, Samuel Stokes of Monkwell Street was granted a patent “for engraving from solid bodies” in 1847; his device was called Stoke’s Patent Engraving Machine.

Contemporary descriptions of its mechanics in The Art Journal (1848) and the Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, etc. (1848) permit us to speculate that the machine in this drawing is the Stokes Machine (and not either the anaglyptograph or a sculptor’s pointing machine). Further, both publications mention Stokes engraving of the Laocoön; the Literary Gazette calls it “remarkable for [its] fidelity and for the perfection of the perspective effect, which we should scarcely have thought capable of being produced by any mechanical instrument.”

Although there seems to be little discussion of the Stokes machine after 1850 (excepting the Encylopaedia Brittanica reference), a plaster cast of the Laocoön was included in the Crystal Palace sculpture court in 1851. It is possible, therefore, that this picture depicts a Stokes machine at the Great Exhibition. The section of the work depicting the Laocoön may be printed, meaning this drawing may incorporate a print made by the Stokes machine.

We are unable to confirm a single extant example of a Stokes engraving; though it is entirely possible that such a print would be miscatalogued as an anaglyptograph. Why didn’t a machine capable of accurately—i.e. mechanically—reproducing three-dimensional objects in two-dimensions catch on? Undoubtedly, the nascent technology of photography, also on display at the Great Exhibition, had something to do with it.

See “On the Applications of Science to the Fine and Useful Arts: Machine for Engraving from the Statute,” Art Journal (December 1848): pp. 363-364; “Stokes Engraving Machine,” Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, No. 1659 (November 4, 1848), p. 731; and The Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 8th Edition (1855), Vol. 8: p. 810.

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Sol LeWitt

LeWitt, Sol. Sol LeWitt. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Ace Gallery, Los Angeles, December 2, 1968 – January 11, 1969. Los Angeles: n.p., [1968?]. Oblong 4o, , 24 pp.; all illustrations, based on a pattern visually described in reproduced introductory drawing; pictorial stapled wrapper, sl. toned, rear cover with one bent corner, very good+.

This scarce catalogue is from a pivotal moment in LeWitt’s career during the year that he made his first Wall Drawings and just before his inclusion in curator Harald Szeemann’s iconic “When Attitude Becomes Form” exhibition.

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