La Ciudad Anarquista Americana

Quiroule, Pierre [pseudo. Falconnet, Joaquín Alejo]. La Ciudad Anarquista Americana: Obra de construcción revolucionaria con el plano de la ciudad libertaria. Buenos Aires: La Protesta, 1914. First edition. 18.5 cm, 283 pp.; the color folding map, 52 x 46 cm, present but loosened, a few small splits along creases; front wrapper lacking, spine and rear wrapper worn, losses at head; first signature stapled; small loss to forecorner of title page.

¡Queremos luz, queremos aire, queremos sol… y en vuestras ciudades y en vuestra organización social solo hay asfixia y tinieblas! [We want light, we want air, we want sun… and in your cities and in your social organization there is only suffocation and darkness!]

Extraordinary document of Latin American anarchist thought and urban planning, and a groundbreaking example in the history of utopian literature, almost unknown in English-language accounts.

Author Pierre Quiroule was a prolific anarchist writer in Argentina where a flourishing worker’s movement in the early 20th century produced numerous anarchist newspapers and periodicals that dominated the revolutionary press. Anarchism was a significant influence in Argentine intellectual circles and politics from 1890-1920, despite being marginalized in many scholarly accounts. (1) This is the context for Quiroule’s most important novel, “of crucial importance to understanding Argentine utopianism” (2) and how the utopian myth shaped national literature and identity. La Ciudad Anarquista distances itself from traditional (European) utopian fiction, which often takes place in ambiguous post-revolutionary eras and fantasy non-spaces, replacing them with definitively New World topographies and a story that highlights the painful transition from capitalist and monarchist society to an anarcho-communist future.

Anticipating some of the challenges of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Quiroule’s novel describes several rounds of political and social transformation, the first is a coup d’etat against the capitalist regime; the second is a revolution against the authoritarian communist state which replaces it. “The Anarchist City of America’s originality resides in the raising of these questions which had never before been addressed by utopian novels.” (3)

Quiroule identifies the metropolis as the corrupting organizational factor of the communist state, and proposes a new way of living in urban communities integrated with nature. For these descriptions he is clearly indebted to the literary examples of William Morris and Joseph Déjacque as well as the political theories of Piotr Kropotkin. Although he comes to some rather absurd conclusions about anarchist clothing and diet, he proposes a number of prophetic ideas about renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.) and the collectivization of land that relate to recent anarchist experiments.

Scarce: not reissued until 1976 and still unavailable in translation; no records of public sales; and only three OCLC holdings in North America: UFL, Washington U, and UNM.

HOLD

NOTES:

1. Santiago Juan-Navarro. “The Anarchist City of America: Libertarian Urban Utopias in the New World.” Atenea 29.1 (2009): 102.

2. op cit.

3. op cit., 105.

Por Que luchan las mujeres

(Mexico) (Feminism) [Chato, Illus.]. Por que luchan las mujeres. Mexico City: 1978. Broadside, 40 cm x 60 cm. Mild fading and toning, a few small chips to blank edges. Creased where folded. Signed “CHATO” in plate.

Poster advertising a feminist lecture series organized by teachers and students from the Physics and Mathematics department of UNAM. Listing the names and titles of the four lecturers and their presentations, including “que es feminismo” by Guatemalan poet Alaide Foppa [shortly before her disappearance by Guatemalan government forces]; “que es el sexismo” by renowned journalist Esperanza Brito; “la mujer en Mexico” by Elena Urrutia; and “alternativa politica” by anthropologist Marta Lamas.

The late 1970s marked an important shift in the Mexican feminist movement, as it aligned more closely with other leftist and worker’s movements. Foppa was the cofounder of the feminist journal Fem, and Brito was its director.

Not in OCLC or market records.

SOLD

La Navassa: Organo di sfottimento dei dep centrati a Tagliolo. Anno I, Nos. 1; 3-6.

(Clandestine Press) (Antifascism) (Satire) La Navassa: Organo di sfottimento dei dep centrati a Tagliolo. Anno I, N. 1 and N. 3-6. Tagliolo, Italy: 1944-1945. 5 of 6 issues, each approx. 40 x 32.5 cm, 6-8 pp., mimeograph from type- and manuscript, printed recto only, each folio folded once and stapled along open edge, leaving inner pages blank; original artwork and hand coloring on nos. 5 and 6. Chronology of nos. 4 and 5 reversed (addressed by editor in issue no. 4). Relatively heavy paper presumably drawn from diminished wartime stocks, perhaps intended for commercial use, now somewhat toned with fraying/chipping at edges, central creases.

Nearly complete run of an antifascist satirical published clandestinely during the final six months of the Italian Resistance in the Piedmont region, part of the German-occupied Italian Social Republic. Printed in the Tagliolo-Monferrato comune, known for its wines, the title is derived from a word in the local dialect for a wooden tub used for collecting and pressing grapes. In the first issue, the pseudonymous editors described their intention to use the paper as a “crucible” to release a “juice rich in spirit and good humor.”

Satirical poems, fiction, theater scripts, comics, and columns discuss local politics and village news while referencing the occupation and the economic hardships of war; many absurdist entries on art, women’s fashion, drinking, and licentious themes of village life. Reports on partisan actions in the area, including a Nazi ambush near Genoa. The final issue (No. 6: May 1, 1945) was dedicated to the liberation of Italy, the execution of Mussolini, and the denunciation of regional fascists. Overall a relatively ambitious production considering contemporary material shortages, the penalties for printing outside of the official Salo Republic propaganda system, and the problems of audience and distribution.

We speculate that the publication may have been produced by tenant winegrowers in Tagliolo, since there are frequent criticisms of the castle and the “commander” of the winery. These laborers ask for parity in treatment with their colleagues in nearby wine zones, including Campo Ligure. The editors’ antifascist sentiment is characteristic of the general population’s participation in the resistance near the end of the war, when communities and individuals responded to highly localized events and conditions in the Salo Republic rather than to specific political philosophies of the partigiani. Although military actions and martyrs of the resistance are discussed, its satirical tone represents the broader purpose of antifascist underground media in WWII: building solidarity and lifting spirits.

Italian WWII clandestine materials are under-represented in major institutional collections of underground and illegal press activities. Not recorded in OCLC member holdings or in specific research holdings related to the resistance in Italy, for example the Bibliographic Research Center at Torino University, the Italian Catalog of Periodicals, the ICCU/OPAC, and the Piedmontese Institute for the History of the Resistance.

SOLD

Tórtola Valencia: Photographs, Programs, Ex-Libris and other Documents

Tórtola Valencia: Photographs, Programs, Ex-Libris and other Documents, 1915-1954.

Though the Spanish-born, British-raised early modern dancer Tórtola Valencia (1882-1955) is rarely discussed in English-language histories, in the 1910s and 1920s “[she] was considered one of the outstanding solo dancers of the period.” Contemporary reviews embraced Tórtola as an innovator with favorable comparisons to Isadora Duncan and Maud Allan. Scholars have speculated that she is often forgotten because her career flourished primarily in Latin America (her third tour there lasted five years). Her well documented engagement with indigenous cultures in Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru included the study of ceramics, textiles, and music, which were incorporated into her choreography and sets. As a queer woman, the sensuality of her performances and a lifestyle of “occultism” and vegetarianism brought her additional scrutiny later in life, in fascist Spain after 1938.

This group of documents explores various aspects of her identity and self-presentation, which was famously multicultural and adaptive: “In her twenty-two year career, from 1908 to her abrupt retirement in 1930, she ceaselessly toured the main theaters of Europe, North America, and Latin America.[...] In the places where she performed, poets and painters were routinely encouraged by local governments to produce artworks commemorating her visit [...] Moreover, Tórtola herself was a collector as well as a dancer, which makes her a crucial figure for thinking about the circulation of culture in the modernist period via artists on tour; what she collected were artifacts, costumes, cultural ideas, and clippings, and through performances that built on those collections, she offered an image of dance’s struggle to engage with other contemporary cultures and their prehistories.”

One of her most unlikely achievements was the premiere, in 1925, of an Incan Warrior Dance in Lima, during the “Fiesta de la Raza.” Based on the story of the “last” Incan king, Huayna Capac, and set to Incan flute music, the performance received “rapturous reviews, an article in El Comercio (September 19, 1925) stands out with [its] emphasis on the dancer’s capacity to connect different cultures [...] ‘[W]hy should it be a surprise that her soul should also have opened itself to that of our glorious Inca race?’ [...]Tórtola’s publicity photograph for the event would continue to circulate—as the planned frontispiece for an English-language book on Inca civilization that was never published, and far more importantly, as the centerpiece in Peru’s exhibition at the 1929 Panamerican Exhibition in Seville.”

Tórtola carefully constructed her own legend, claiming to be the daughter of an Andalusian gypsy, as well as the barefoot inspiration for Nicaraguan poet Rubén Dario’s ”La bailarina de los pies desnudos.” During her retirement in Franco’s Spain, her sexuality required another fiction: she adopted her longtime companion, Ángeles Magret-Vilá, who became her heir.

As a ceaseless creator of her own public image, Tórtola was known to hand color her publicity photos and draw ideas for her costumes and sets. She also designed ex-libris for her friends. This group features three examples of photographs hand colored by Tórtola and signed in dedication to a friend, with an accompanying letter written by Margret-Vilá. It also includes a rare example of the studio photographs Tórtola made in Lima to commemorate “La danza incaica guerrera.” The scarce prints are the only surviving documentation of this important work and its pioneering visual palimpsest of Incan identity and music in dance.

SOLD

Consisting of:

Tortola Valencia. Barcelona: Thomas, nd., ca. 1917-1918. 27.5 x 19 cm, [32] pp.; publicity book, illus. throughout, with an annotated list of 42 of her dances and excerpts of reviews from her North and South American tours, 1915-1917; in illus. stapled self-wrappers, central sheet separated, rest loose, some edges with closed tears. Not found in OCLC. Three programs from ‘El Dorado’ theater, Barcelona, 1917-1918. All near 16.5 x 12 cm, two single-fold illustrated programs, the third [48] pp; the two former reproducing poems, one by Ruben Dario, the other by Francisco Villaespesa; the third illustrating the full program of dancers for the 1917-1918 season, including La Argentina, Raquel Meller, Amalia Molina, etc., and reproductions of the sets, by painter Juan Morales. Very Good. Not found in OCLC. La Pelicula: Revista popular ilustrada, Año I, Num 1 (June 1915). Madrid, et al. Cover illustration of Tórtola, toned and frayed. The first issue of an otherwise unrecorded? silent film review. Three hand colored publicity photos: each approx. 23.5 x 17 cm, dated in plates 1915-1918, with holograph inscriptions dedicated to Luis Santamarina, together with a single page holograph letter on monogrammed stationery written by Margret-Vilá to Luis Santamarina describing the images “iluminadas por ella misma [Tórtola] en la actualidad.” Papers with chipped edges, not affecting the images, dampstain at the edge of two of the photos, one at blank edge affecting approx 1 x 20 mm of hte print, the other 1.5 x 9 cm. Vivid and extremely scarce self-representations, despite imperfect conditions. Vintage photograph of Tórtola and painter Ignacio Zuloaga, Sitges, n.d. approx. 16 x 16 cm. Vintage Publicity photograph of “La danza incaica guerrera,” n.d. [ca. 1925], 22.5 x 16 cm, near fine, multiple numeric pencil notations verso. Five Ex-Libris by Tórtola for Dr. Juan Catasús, 1954, four 11 x 9 cm, one slightly smaller, very good. One Ex-Libris Tórtola Valencia, 12 x 9 cm, undated. Three monograms, from drawings by Tórtola, clipped from larger sheets, undated.

Clayton, M. (2012). Touring History: Tórtola Valencia Between Europe and the Americas. Dance Research Journal 44(1), 28-49.

See also:

Garland, I. (1997). Early Modern Dance in Spain: Tórtola Valencia, Dancer of the Historical Intuition. Dance Research Journal 29(2), 1-22; and Mitchel Snow, K. (2020). A Revolution in Movement: Dancers, Painters, and the Image of Modern Mexico. University of Florida Press.

La Argentina: A Collection of Photographs, Postcards, Programs, Reviews, and other Publications

(Dance) [Mercé, Antonia, “La Argentina”]; [Dora Kallmus, “Madame d’Ora”] and [Mary Elizabeth Gleason]. La Argentina: A Collection of Photographs, Postcards, Programs, Reviews, and other Publications, ca. 1928-1933.

An excellent group of primary source materials surveying the career of internationally renowned choreographer, dancer, and director, Antonia Mercé (1888-1936), known as La Argentina. Born in Buenos Aires, Mercé and her parents–both dancers–moved to Spain when she was a child; by the age of 11 she was a star ballerina at the Teatro Real de Madrid. She retired from ballet at 17 and began to study native Spanish folk dances. She has been described as an “assiduous ethnographer, combing Spain for rhythms, materials, and design concepts” and her interpretations of these dances, including bolero and flamenco, played an important role in the popularization and modernization of these forms. Living in Paris and with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes as her model, she founded the company Les Ballets Espagnols, creating an avant-garde forum for Spanish dance and music. Her collaborative dance-theater productions “offered a modernist vision of a multinational Spain,” fusing classical Spanish ballet with Roma flamenco rhythms and legends.

In her friend Federico García Lorca’s words: “All the classical dances of this great artist are her unique signature, at the same time that they are the signature of her country, of my country.” Despite being awarded the French Légion d’honneur and dancing at the Roosevelt White House, her significant contributions to Spanish modern art and her position as the director of the largest ballet company in Paris (after Diaghilev’s death) were largely forgotten during the Franco dictatorship.

Most of the portraits in this collection were photographed by Dora Kallmus, a.k.a. Madame d’Ora, the Austrian-Jewish emigre whose Parisian studio was frequented by the Who’s Who of 1920s Parisian art and fashion: Coco Chanel, Colette, Pablo Picasso, and Josephine Baker, etc.

The clippings and programs were assembled by Mary Elizabeth Winbigler, née Gleason, an American dancer inspired by La Argentina who studied flamenco in Spain in the 1920s and performed in Madrid under the name “Marie Isabel” in 1931. When she returned to the US she organized a 50-member dance troupe who toured during the Depression, often performing as an opening act in movie theaters. The collection includes the typescript of a radio interview between Gleason and Argentina in 1935.

SOLD

Consisting of: Ten publicity postcards, all reproducing photographs of Argentina taken by d’Ora (five 10 x 14.5 cm, five 9 x 14.5 cm), one with holograph signature by Argentina, Madrid, 1931; three duplicates, two of the dupes with different programs advertised verso. Five programs: 1.) A Recital of Spanish Dances by La Argentina with Assistance of Carmencita Perez, Pianist, Pittsburgh: Nixon Theatre, December 11, 1928. Single sheet, folded 15 x 11.5 cm, with pictorial illus. on cover. 2.) Récital de Danse Espagnole donné par Mme Argentina avec le concours du pianiste Luis Galve, Paris, ca. 1933. 23.5 x 19.5 cm, [10] pp.; stapled pictorial wrapper with foiled rear wrap and decorative satin cord. 3.) Les Représentations de Madame Argentina avec sa troupe de Ballets Espagnols. Paris: Théâtre Marigny, July 1929. 27 x 22 cm, [34] pp.; profusely illus. incl. 4 b/w plates tipped in. Stapled color illustrated wrapper with decorative satin cord and original glassine overlay (now darkened). Gleason’s copy of this exceptional program exemplifies the height of Argentina’s success with her Ballets Espagnols. With a single sheet program tipped in for a Vincente Escuedro flamenco recital at Severance Hall, Cleveland, 1932. 4.) Two copies of Hommage a La Argentina par Nana de Herrera, Paris: Grande Salle Pleyel, 18 Juillet 1941. 25 x 21.5 cm, decorative satin cord binding, covers with full-page reproduction of d’Ora studio image of La Argentina. One copy lightly foxed in one corner, the other with a small closed tear at spine. Seven vintage publicity photos: gelatin silver prints, six approx. 16.5 x 22.5 cm, one 13 x 11.5 cm; five signed d’Ora in negative, two photographs by Madrid studio photographers, known to be used in advertisements ca. 1935. Folder of clippings: approx. 16 items from English and Spanish language sources, with articles about La Argentina and images, including reproductions of her costumes. Radio Script for WTAM, Cleveland: 4 pp. typescript of interview between Mary Elizabeth Gleason and La Argentina broadcast on Monday, November 4, 1935, discussing modern dance and La Argentina’s Order of Isabella award [the first woman to be so honored?] shortly before La Argentina’s untimely death. Together with Gleason’s copy of: Levinson, André, La Argentina: Essai sur la danse espagnole avec 32 reproductions en phototypie. Paris: Éditions des Chroniques du Jour, 1928. No. 259 from 365. French self-wrappers separating from text block, pages starting. With Mary Elizabeth Gleason’s bookplate.

See Ninotchka Devorah Bennahum, Antonia Merce, La Argentina: Flamenco and the Spanish Avant Garde, Wesleyan University Press, 2000.

Porvenir: Revista Infantil. Nos. 1-11, 13

(Children’s Literature) (Guerra Civil) (Anarchism) (Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia) Ediciones F.R.E.R. [Federación Regional de Escuelas Racionalistas de Cataluña]. Porvenir: Revista Infantil. Nos. 1-11, 13. Barcelona: 1937-1938. 12 issues (lacking no. 12), nos. 1-9 each 22 x 31.5 cm, nos. 10-13 each 19.5 x 29.5 cm; nos. 1-5 with [8] pp., nos. 6-13 with [10]-[12] pp.; color illustrations throughout; color self-wrappers, loose as issued, a few originally stapled; papers lightly toned at edges, no. 3 with one page darkened and frayed at fore edge, no. 4 covers separated with closed tears at edges and some flaking, no. 11 small ink manuscript annotation on blank edge of front wrap.

A near complete run of a rare children’s serial, published in castellano for the thousands of rearguard Republican children sheltering in Barcelona during the civil war. The publishing entity, FRER, was a federation of rationalist schools based on the Escuela Moderna pedagogy of anarchist educator Francesco Ferrer. During the Civil War FRER was led by the anarchist Benjamín Cano Ruiz, who concluded that refugee children urgently needed a counterpoint to the militaristic storytelling and propaganda emerging from the Republican government and communist (i.e. Soviet-influenced) social organizations.

Cano oversaw the “Respect Children” campaign led by the FAI/Juventudes Libertarias and created tremendous publicity for Porvenir by emphasizing the importance of play and craft, children’s own storytelling, and fantasy and observation over didactic, antifascist exercises. The magazine sponsored many writing competitions for prose, poems, and theatrical works by children.

Contributing artists included illustrators well-known for their graphic work on FAI/CNT graphics: Gumersindo Sainz Morales de Castilla, aka “Gumsay” and Tomás Vera Morales, aka “Esbelt”. Another fantastic cover by the artist Luis Vidal Molné and many issues largely attributed to woman cartoonist Mari Batlle, who became known in the 1950s for her artwork in girl’s comics.

A Catalan-language edition, Pervenir, ceased after the first 4 issues. Only single-issue holdings of either edition in OCLC institutions: IISG in Amsterdam (Porvenir, no. 8) and University of Barcelona (Pervenir, no. 1).

SOLD

Two Photographs of Los Agraristas de 1o de Mayo

Two Photographs of Los Agraristas de 1o de Mayo. N.d. Printing-out paper, each print approx. 12 x 17 cm, mounted on 16 x 25 cm card, with red manuscript annotations recto.

In the early 1920s, peasants successfully organized a widespread “agrarismo” movement. Their purpose was to defend village land rights and local traditions from the landowners they believed were determined to betray the revolutionary cause of the agrarian Zapatista movement. The importance of this ongoing peasant movement to secure land reform and maintain communal access to indigenous lands has been the subject of revisionist histories which sought to show these peasants as political tools manipulated into supporting revolutionary state-making, and now, postrevisionist histories, which insist on the agrarians as effective local participants in the formation of postrevolutionary Mexico.

These two photos annotated, presumably by the photographer, to show the location of their residence in relation to the protest. We are able to identify a few possible candidates for the Calle Arista shown: possibly Guadalajara.

SOLD

11 Press Photographs of the Zapatista Uprising, Chiapas, Mexico

IMAGENLATINA. [Marco Antonio Cruz]. 11 Press Photographs of the Zapatista Uprising, Chiapas, Mexico. January 1994. Gelatin silver prints, sheets approx. 20.3 x 25.5 cm, image sizes vary slightly, most approx. 15.5 x 21 cm; all near fine except one with a 2.2 cm closed tear to white border not affecting the image. 8 with labels identifying location and photographer: Marco Antonio Cruz (5), Jose Angel Rodriguez (1), Francisco Mata Rosas (1) and Antonio Turok (1).

Vivid images of the violent initial uprising of the armed indgenous people of Chiapas against the Mexican state. On January 1, 1994 the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional [EZLN] declared war on Mexico, prompting a deadly crisis documented here by some of the era’s most important Mexican photojournalists and documentary photographers.

The conflict had its roots in both NAFTA and the revision of the Mexican constitution’s article 27 which protected indigenous lands from sale and privatization. Small paramilitary rebel groups in Chiapas merged to form EZLN and territories seized by the group in the 1990s still remain under its autonomous (but unrecognized) control.

The ImagenLatina photo agency was founded in ​​1986 by award-winning photographer Pedro Valtierra. A few of these images digitized in stock photo collections, most unavailable.

SOLD

75 Photographs of Modernist Buildings

(Brazil) (Architecture) 75 Photographs of Modernist Buildings, ca. 1954-60. Gelatin silver prints, 71 approx. 9.8 x 6.5 cm, four larger, 24 x 18 cm., mounted, most on a single side or with corners, to 20 paper sheets. A few with manuscript numerical captions on the page, some with similar annotations verso. With two postcards tipped-in, one of Rio, the other of the planned campus at Pontifícia Universidade Católica. Most near fine, a few with small discolorations.

Collection of 75 images of Brazilian modern architecture, from the “first” modernist building in Rio de Janeiro, Oscar Niemeyer’s Palácio Gustavo Capanema, to the famed period of massive urban expansion under President Juscelino Kubitschek, including two Niemeyer projects in Belo Horizonte—the Auditorium of Colégio Estadual Central (1954) and the BEGME tower—as well as a number of examples under construction or recently completed, e.g. four photographs of Hospital Sul América da Instituição Larragoiti, by Niemeyer and Hélio Uchôa (1959), approx. 10 of the new Gavea campus of Pontifícia Universidade Católica (1955), and approx. five of of Jorge Machado Moreira’s Faculdade Nacional de Arquitetura Building at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (ca. 1957), both largely unfinished projects based on Le Corbusier’s ideas about functional zoning. Includes four prints of architectural drawings, and at least three of architectural models on display, seemingly of Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC-RIO) and the proposed campus of Federal University of Rio De Janeiro, including grounds by Roberto Burle Marx. Another thirteen photographs of residential homes provide a fascinating look at the adaptation of these architectural vocabularies to vernacular buildings in Brazil, an architectural heritage now at risk as low-rise neighborhoods give way to high-rise development.

The photographs were taken over the course of 5 or 6 years of deliberate inquiry by an unknown researcher or professional. The sometimes informal compositions reveal glimpses of the unbuilt environments in which many of the projects arose: savannas, forests, and manmade islands; the architectural designs of PUC-RIO by Edgar de Oliveira da Fonseca (architect of Rio’s Metropolitan Cathedral) raise questions about a plan that is largely absent from conversations about Brazilian modernism in the 1950s, despite the fact that they strongly echo Niemeyer and Affonso Riedy designs.

A few photographs as yet unidentified.

SOLD

Cholos a la Neza: Otra identidad de la migración

(Photography) (Migration Studies) Hernandez Sanchez, Pablo and Federico Gama. Cholos a la Neza: Otra identidad de la migración. México, DF: Instituto Mexicano de la Juventud, 2007. 26 cm, 134 pp.; profusely illustrated, color boards, sl. dinged at edges.

Documents the cholo identity (tattoos, fashion, cars, music, funerals) of youth in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (aka “Neza”) from the late 1990s-early 2000s. Neza contains part of one of the largest slums in the world and endemic gang violence. Examines the relationship between this culture and cyclical migration between the US and Mexico; focusing on the adaptation of US cholo culture to communities of origin, and the symbolic recovery of pre-Hispanic elements in the styles of the Neza cholos.

Uncommon, five US holdings in OCLC.

ON HOLD

America en la Mira: Muestra de Grafica Internacional

[Frente Mexicano de Trabajadores de la Cultura] and [Alberto Hijar]. America en la Mira: Muestra de Grafica Internacional. Exh. Cat. Mexico D.F.: Frente Mexicano de Trabajadores de la Cultura, 1978. 28 cm, 192 pp.; intro and back matter tog. with 162 b/w pls. of works in the exhibition, small dampstain in lower corner of first quarter of text block, not affecting images. Illus. wrappers, heavily worn with closed tears on rear wrapper and two deep dents.

Catalogue documenting the early days of the emerging Marxist “grupos” movement – a response to the controversial X Paris Youth Biennial (1977) where Mexico was excluded from the larger Latin American pavilion because of the political content of its artwork. El Frente Mexicano de Trabajadores de la Cultura was made up of a number of the groups, or members of the groups, selected by Helen Escobedo for the Paris exhibition including members of Grupo Mira, Grupo Suma, Grupo Taller de Arte e Ideología (TAI), Proceso Pentágono, etc. These groups protested the Mexican regime, supported global anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles, and identified themselves as “cultural workers” rather than artists. This first exhibition of El Frente brought together an international network of such workers creating “combative graphics.”

Polemical intro texts by Alberto Hijar (UNAM) and others demonstrate ongoing tensions between radical student groups and solidarity with the Sandanista movement and other workers movements in el Cono Sur. The exhibition was displayed in university and museum galleries across Mexico and included work from the San Francisco Poster Brigade and La Raza Silkscreen Center (San Francisco), Los dos Streetscapers (Los Angeles), Untel (Paris), Cuatro (Morrocco), and El Centro Experimental (Naples).

Four copies recorded in North American OCLC member holdings.

SOLD

L’Art Décoratif pour Tous.

Ruffe, Léon, ed. L’Art Décoratif pour Tous. Nos. 1-17, 19-42; Nos. 2-12 (Nouvelle Série). Paris: Samuel Sigismond Schwarz, 1902-1903 [First and Second Series]; Hostingue & Blum, 1903-1904 [“Nouvelle Série”]. Together with L’Art Décoratif pour Tous. Nos. 1-41; Nos. 1-12 (Nouvelle Série). Paris: Samuel Sigismond Schwarz, 1902-1903 [First and Second Series]; Hostingue & Blum, 1903-1904 [“Nouvelle Série”].

Two fine and near complete runs (together containing every issue and plate) of the rare Art Nouveau decorative arts journal, illustrated with more than 130 full-page chromolithographic and pochoir plates. The publisher, Samuel Sigismund Schwarz, was best known for the anarchist-leaning satirical weekly L’Assiette au Beurre. As the title L’Art Decoratif pour Tous suggests, the magazine was sympathetic to the same political philosophies of social transformation, in this case through art and design.

A stylish example of Art Nouveau printing, L’Art Decoratif was part of a larger movement to synthesize the fine and applied arts; encourage the craftsmanship of French artisans while embracing industrial arts and modern technologies; and revolutionize society through popular access to culture. “[L]e devoir esthétique se confond avec l’ordre moral, qui est de propager la vie, puisque la Beauté en exalte les forces et les perpétue.”

The editor, Léon Ruffe, was an engraver whose artistic direction of the deluxe woodblock monthly, L’image (1896-97), was recognized with a medal at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle. Ruffe brought this fine press sensibility to L’Art Decoratif and its documentation of Art Nouveau tendencies in everyday objects (“objets usuels”) of middle- and working-class life: architecture, wallpaper, textiles, glass, metalwork, typography, book design, lighting, furniture, leather, ceramics, tiles, menus, and more. Emphasizing the democratization of art and beautiful design, the serial offered special editions of furniture and lighting, and provided designs and instructions for amateur crafters and householders in a section called “L’Atelier de l’amateur.” The eye-catching color plates were proposed to subscribers as a series of collectible posters for the popular print album format or for home decoration.

When Schwarz went bankrupt in 1903 the magazines were sold; L’Art Decoratif and L’image resumed publication under the imprint of René Blum (co-editor of the satirical Gil Blas and brother of Léon Blum, the first Socialist Prime Minister of France).

Well-known names from the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements and Les Maîtres de l’Affiche were frequent contributors, including Roger Marx, Paul Follot, Peter Behrens, Jules Rais, Pierre Selmersheim, Armand van Waesberghe, Henri Bellery-Desfontainer, Georges de Feure, and Edouard Beneditus. Typography, graphics, and plates attributed to Adolphe Cossard, Emile Jammes, Henry de Waroquier, and the Mucha student, printmaker Vojtěch Preissig (later a famed Czech Resistance publisher murdered by Nazis at Dachau).

Scarce. One near complete run held by the Met, three incomplete sets identified at Bard, Northwestern, and the BNF. The present examples, loose and bound, satisfy needs for both exhibition and research.

SOLD

1) Folio (varies, approx. 35 cm), 52 of 54 issues, 12-24 pp., most 16 pp.; profusely illustrated with b/w reproductions of original artwork, photography, and designs, and 130+ large color plates. Weekly with intermittent supplements until no. 22, then biweekly with 4 color plates in each issue (including wrappers). Lacking no. 18 (1902) and no. 1 (1903); no. 4 (1903) front wrapper present only. Color pictorial stapled wrappers, rear wrap with adverts for Bing, L’Assiette au Beurre, etc. Housed in three custom-made cloth-and-decorative board folders, the trio housed together in a matching clamshell case.

2) 2 vols., 53 of 54 issues, profusely illustrated with b/w reproductions of original artwork, photography, and designs, and 130+ large color plates. Weekly with intermittent supplements until no. 22, then biweekly with 4 color plates in each issue (including wrappers). Lacking no. 42 (1903) and supplemental pl. no. 8 from Nouvelle Serie, No. 8. Orig. color pictorial wrappers bound in to contemporary half calf and marbled paper boards, gilt title to spine with ex-libris initials “J.M.” Boards rubbed, a few supplemental plates from the Nouvelle Serie loose and worn at edges.

The Secrets of Beauty

Helena Rubinstein. The Secrets of Beauty [cover title]. Paris; London; New York: Np, nd. (ca. 1927). Oblong 12.4 cm; 40 pp.; three b/w illustrations: one of Mme. Rubinstein and 2 of her NYC salons; in stapled purple and silver textured pictorial wrappers, rubbed, small area of loss to color on rear wrapper, filled in.

Rare descriptive trade catalogue for Helena Rubinstein’s Valaze line, with images of two of her NYC salons before they were remodeled and relocated in 1928. Numerous objects from her African, American, and Oceanic art collections are visible. A price index and table of contents at the end. The business address and product line lead us to suggest a date of 1927 with some confidence.

Rubinstein was a Jewish refugee who became one of the world’s richest women through her pioneering work in cosmetics and marketing.

Not recorded in OCLC.

SOLD

Preparatory Material for the Exhibition: Art, A Weapon for Total War

(Arts Propaganda) (WII) (Communism) Victory Workshop, Artists League of America. Preparatory Material for the Exhibition: Art, A Weapon for Total War. [New York]: [1943] 8-½ x 11 in., 5 pp. typescript on tan paper, fragile and splitting, with losses.

The present typescript outlines an otherwise unrecorded exhibition (unrealized?) titled “Art, A Weapon for Total War.” Its “aims, topics, subject-matter, media, and forms” are described in the strident language of popular front propaganda, proposing that the artist is “a specialist well suited for the task” of total war.

The Artists League of America (ALA) was one of several arts propaganda groups founded in 1942 when the US Communist Party’s popular front organization, The American Artists’ Congress (AAC), collapsed after the US entered WWII. Members of the AAC merged with the Artists Union to become the Artists League of America. The “Victory Workshop” was similar in nature to the better known Artists for Victory coalition which sponsored the national graphic exhibition “America in War.”

Suggestions are made for artist contributions in many media: painting (including murals and documentary painting), silkscreens, sculpture displays, floats, masks, puppets, window displays, comics, photography and stickers. Special attention given to the possible fate of “women, religion, minorities, labor” and “Negroes” under the fascist order.

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Société Anonyme, Inc. (Museum of Modern Art). Report 1920-1921

Dreier, Katherine; Marcel Duchamp, et al. Société Anonyme, Inc. (Museum of Modern Art). Report 1920-1921. New York: 1921. Tall 8vo (25.5 cm), 50 pp.; 24 b/w illus. reproducing artworks by Archipenko, Brancusi, Man Ray, Villon, etc., interior near fine; in paper boards with title label, a bit rubbed with small losses to paper at board edges, crown of rear joint loosened, otherwise very good.

A document of real museological significance for modern art in the US: the first annual report of New York’s first Museum of Modern Art, founded by artist and activist Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray in 1920 (nine years before MoMA) to showcase and promote “a better understanding” of international modernism “throughout the country, as well as in New York City.” The report documents the first year of exhibitions, lectures, and publications of the Society, which “acted as a leaven in the art world of America.”

Descriptions of the exhibitions include fascinating notes on display and gallery design. Lists of the included artists offer hints at the internationalism of modern schools and lesser-known names while lecture notes conjure wonderful evenings, including The First Birthday Party: An Evening with Gertrude Stein. Concludes with a catalogue of the Reference LIbrary, some entries with annotations the author considered important, e.g. “very rare, out of print” and “entered into the Library because it shows the break of the earlier Renaissance from the Byzantine.”

The Société Anonyme was the first permanent collection of modern art in the United States.

SOLD

Promotional Album for Art-Deco Advertising Vehicles

(Graphic Design) (Automobiles) (Bicycling) Publicité Automobile Routière Lumineuse Animée Sonore [PARLAS]. Promotional Album for Art-Deco Advertising Vehicles. Bagneaux [Paris]: [1932-1939].

Unusual photographic documentation of “light-and-sound” advertising vehicles, including trucks, a limo, and a very futuristic art-deco van, all with ad panels and large loud-speakers mounted to the roof, some with additional modifications, including a truck whose panels drop to reveal a glass vitrine—a moving shop window. The vehicles (“camion publicitaire”) promote department stores and theaters, including the Folies Bergere; Theatre des Gobelins; and Theatre Montparnasse. Shown attracting attention in crowded Parisian streets, many photographs also depict the vehicles during hugely popular road cycling events, including the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix Cyliste, and the Circuit de l’Ouest.

A delightful example of vernacular Art-Deco design, with unexpected views of Paris street life just before WWII.

SOLD

41 photographs, most approx. 11 x 7 cm, mounted on 29 cardboard mounts, each 11.5 x 17.5 cm with a year written in white ink, a few with additional captions (e.g. Paris-Roubaix Cyliste; Tour de France), together with two large business cards (one photographic). Cards laid in a worn cloth folder, one mounted to the inside cover. Photos and mounts VG, a few areas of light discoloration from orig. adhesive, one hand-colored.

Bougies de l’Etoile

(Art Nouveau) (Candles) (Social Programs) L. Felix Fournier & Cie. Bougies de l’Etoile. Paris, Marseille. [Marseille]: [Maison Fournier], n.d. [ca. 1900]. Oblong 22 cm., [32] pp.; profusely illus. catalogue, 2-3 b/w photogravures per page from images by Marseille photographer F. Giuglard; in stapled pictorial wrappers.

Delightful catalogue advertising the “deluxe” manufacturing process of Fournier’s Etoile candle with a “visit to the factory,” where men and women are shown producing as many as 120,000 packets of candles a day. Photographic reproductions and descriptions of the process surrounded by various Art Nouveau graphics and typography.

Curious final section “Oeuvres” dedicated to health and philanthropic services provided by the company to the workers, including a pharmacy and infant care, as well as primary schools for boys and girls.

Printed for an exhibition, presumed to be the Exposition Universelle 1900, which is referred to explicitly in the introduction citing the Exposition’s official classification numbers [“groupe XIV (industrie chimique)”]. Not found in OCLC.

SOLD

La Espiga: Revista de Orientación Espiritual

Tíndaro, [Jorge] Celso, Ed. La Espiga: Revista de Orientación Espiritual. Ano I, No. 1 (Nov. 1920) -No II, No. 15 (Jan 1922) (lacking no. 5). Buenos Aires: [Imp. Oceana], 1920-1922. Fourteen issues: trimming varies, each approx. 23 x 24 cm, [12]-[20] pp.; stapled pictorial wrappers from an illustration by “P. Tosto,” nos. 1-3 on fragile newsprint, toned with losses, nos. 1-3 and 8 with tape repairs; all with center fold crease, many with closed tears starting at creases, edges worn. Most with “Biblioteca S.A.L.C. F.V.” stamp recto. Mild odor.

A nearly complete run of the exceptionally rare literature monthly focusing on modernismo, romantic, and symbolist writers from Latin America, Europe, and Eurasia, many originally in French, Italian, German, and English, in addition to translated excerpts from classic texts in Greek, Hindu, Latin, and Farsi. Recurring sections on Meshalim and Talmud suggest additional familiarity with Judaism. The polyglot, pantheistic nature of the magazine prefigures by several years the Argentinian literary avant-garde’s fascination with mythology, the occult, and language (e.g. Xul Solar, Grupo Florida, Proa and Sur).

“Celso Tíndaro” seems to have edited and written under a number of pseudonyms, including Pedro B. Franco. Through these names they can be traced to an international network of socialist politicians and labor leaders, mystical and symbolist poets, philosophers and a surprising number of early feminists. Tíndaro was involved with two of the Ottoman diplomat Emín Arslán’s Argentinian papers, as a writer at La Nota, and editor at El Lápiz Azul, where they presumably developed connections to Turkish and Persian literature.

Tíndaro can also be connected to Juan B. Justo, Alicia Moreau de Justo’s husband, both prominent socialists and supporters of women’s rights in Argentina. Espiga published an unusual number of women, including Juana de Ibarbourou, Justa B. Gallardo de Salazar, Concepción Arenal, Carmen Sonda de Pandolfini, Amalia Guglielminetti, Alfonsina Storni, Gabriela Mistral, Ellen Key, and Herminia Catalina Brumana. Excerpts are also included by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Additional authors of note include Ruben Dario, Jose Ingenieros, José Enrique Rodó, Amado Nervo, Jose Marti, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Jean Jaurès, Oscar Wilde, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A fascinating publication, worthy of further study, that may aid in broadening understanding of the diverse influences on the South American avantgarde. A single record listed in OCLC, with no holdings identified.

SOLD

MAPA: Revista de Turismo. [50 issues]

[Asociación Mexicana Automovilística]. MAPA: Revista de Turismo. Nos. 1, 3-5, 7-11, 13-22, 24, 26, 31, 34-35, 38-46, 48, 52-54, 56-59, 61-62, 78, 80, 88, 108, 114. [subtitle varies]. Mexico, D.F.: Editorial Mercurial, 1934-1943. 50 issues incl. two duplicate (nos. 9, 43), 11-¾ x 8 in., most approx. 46-64 pp.; profusely illus., largely by b/w reproductions from photos, Spanish with a short English language section in most issues; printed on fragile newsprint, many issues toned or dampstained, small tape repairs, and minor chips or closed tears throughout; pictorial stapled wrappers, stained and/or chipped, many with issue number penciled recto, nos. 7, 22, 24, 58, and 61 either loose or with substantial losses, nos. 46, 54, and 56 incomplete.

Founded in 1934, the monthly serial MAPA is now recognized as an inventive, primary document of Mexico’s national tourist program. “The story of the development of Mexico’s tourist industry unfolds during a mostly unlikely period—revolutionary state building.” Embracing both modernism and indigenism, MAPA publicized the incredibly diverse natural, archaeological, and cultural features of Mexico’s states, providing a literal roadmap for the tourist industry that continues today. The Asociación Mexicana Automovilística worked with government agencies to produce a stylized and propagandistic guide for automobile tourism, informing the public about new roads and services, promoting automobile ownership and travel, but especially highlighting popular arts, festivals, local traditions, natural resources, architecture, museums in the capital, and even foreign tourism in a monthly feature. Tourism emerged during the Cardenas administration as a post-revolutionary industry that fused nationalism and modernity by celebrating the grandeur of all things Mexican and fueling local economic growth. “It was an expression of revolutionary reconstruction rooted in capitalism, namely development, urbanization, and personal advancement.” Unfortunately it also proved to be “a kind of imperialism.”*

The editor, Francisco Borja Bolado, worked with luxury hotel impresario and AMA founding member Lucas de Palacio to engage an envious list of collaborators for MAPA. The arresting photography of the first five years was chiefly by Hugo Brehme, Luis Márquez, and Rafael Garcia, with additional contributors including Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl). In addition to accomplished staff writers, issues include articles by Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, historian Manuel Toussaint, poet Xavier Villaurrutía and novelist José Rubén Romero.

Hand-lettered Art Deco titles within are complemented by period advertisements for cars, hotels, perfumes, auto parts and services, etc. Although the magazine shifted in the 1940s from its initial avantgarde design, it continued in various formats until 1953.

Substantial runs of the early numbers are uncommon institutionally and in the market. OCLC finds scattered or incomplete holdings at Harvard (missing), NYPL, UC-Berkeley, and Toronto; with a more or less intact run at UT-Austin.

*Dina Berger, The Development of Mexico’s Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

SOLD

25 Photographs

García, Héctor. 25 Vintage Photographs, ca. 1956-1966. Gelatin silver prints. Ranging from 12.5 x 17.5 cm to 25 x 20 cm, most 17 x 20 cm or larger. All with studio stamp verso, some with penciled inscriptions, five with editor’s red pencil cropping marks recto. One with date stamp 1966 verso, one inscribed 1956 by HG, 2 with lengthy penciled captions in HG’s hand, others with penciled annotations verso possibly in HG hand. A few slightly rippled, minor wear to edges and surfaces, most VG+.

Acclaimed Mexican photographer Héctor García (1923-2012) began his six-decade career as a student of Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Gabriel Figueroa at the Academia de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas. Inspired by Álvarez Bravo, García became a photojournalist, celebrated for his social criticism and images of Mexico City. From the late 1940s onward, the core of his work was street photography, taken during daily walks through the poor and working-class areas of the city where he grew up. García defined himself this way (“yo soy un fotógrafo callejero”) and “posited street photography as central to the medium itself by stating that ‘el mundo de fotógrafo está en la calle, y que allí está el elemento esencial para lograr buenas fotografías: el aspecto humano’ (the world of the photographer is the street, for it is there that one finds the element essential for good photographs: the human factor).”

He also won awards for his documentation of national protest movements in 1958 and 1968, and created well known portraits of his friends in the city’s artistic and intellectual circles, including Frida Kahlo, David Sisquieros, Dolores del Río, Octavio Paz, and Maria Félix.

The present group epitomizes his artistic talent and the contradictions he witnessed in a postrevolutionary Mexican society that idealized rural peasant life while nurturing anxiety over the growing importance of urban youth culture. “The period during which García began to work professionally coincides with President Miguel Alemán’s milagro mexicano (Mexican miracle, 1946–1952), an era of intensive urbanization and industrialization.” Images of laborers, children, and the homeless, as well as dynamic portraits of the transnational Pachuco culture (which thrived in the 1950s in lower class neighborhoods like Tepito); street barbers and musicians; and one of García himself, surrounded by children in a slum, all represent an emerging “modern” Mexico in great contrast to the one popularized by Alemán’s patriarchal, authoritarian PRI.

In 1950 he founded his own agency, Foto Press, and unlike many other photographers of his generation, was able to retain the rights to his work. The inexpensive papers and editorial notations and cropping marks (some of which are in García’s hand) are revealing of his working practices and speak to his commitment to photojournalism as both an art and information. Representing himself, he was able to actively collaborate with photo editors, as well as a number of writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Elena Garro, and Elena Poniatowska.

Despite the historical significance of his massive archive, holdings of vintage García prints are scarce in US institutions and often limited to celebrity portraits.

SOLD

Contents list available on request.

See Jesse Lerner, “The Proletarian Camera: Héctor García and the Reconfiguring of the Mexican Street,” in Ghosts of the Mexican Revolution in Mexican Literature and Visual Culture, pp. 191-218.

Offered in collaboration with Auger Down Books.

Photograph Album, British Honduras [Belize]

[Warren, Rev. H.S.P.]. Photograph Album, British Honduras [Belize], ca. 1938-1943? Oblong photo album with 43 photographs: 40 larger prints (22.6 x 18.8 cm) and 3 real photo postcards (approx. 14 x 19 cm). The former originally secured one per page via contemporary plastic photo corners which are now fragile or unusable, some images therefore partially or totally loose. Prints VG+. Three items laid-in: 1) a manuscript copy of an extract from Belize Town’s The Daily Clarion, Vol. LXXI, No. 135, June 19, 1943, “Farewell to St. Michael’s Principal”; 2) an envelope inscribed in the same hand to an unknown reader: “I feel sure you will like to see this as you contributed so generously to St. Michaels”; and 3) a greeting card with a hand-drawn map showing topography of a home as photographed (these photographs not present?). Two pages with empty corners.

Remarkable and sometimes unsettling collection of portraits presumed to be taken by Father H.S.P. Warren, an Anglican priest in British Honduras (Belize). From 1938-1943, Warren was the principal of St. Michael’s College, a boys’ secondary school in Belize Town.*

A skilled amateur photographer, Warren produced images with rich tones and self-conscious compositions in a quasi-Pictorialist style. The intimate scenes speak to a familiarity with his subjects, possibly encountered through church-sanctioned camps or other extracurricular activities related to his position at St. Michael’s. Although some of the photographs depict children at play, laughing and making eye contact with the camera in European-style clothing, many are posed and profoundly exoticized and/or eroticized. These scenes reproduce a troubling, colonial vision of Central American people, and use certain props—a bow and arrow, textiles and loincloths—to represent a generalized “Indian” ethnicity.

Warren’s imagined indigenous subject was particularly tenuous in the territories of British Honduras. Largely abandoned by the Maya before the European encounter, its self-described mestizo and Creole populations descend from Afro-Caribbean, Garifuna, Maya, East Indian, Spanish, and British ancestry. The vague “otherness” of the pictures reveal how fictive Central American racial identities were created within the European imagination, replacing real, lived hierarchies of economic and political repression.

The album is an important example for the evolving study of the relationship between colonial photographers and their subjects, demonstrating both the exploitative potential of the lens and its more nuanced history as a “medium of interaction between white settlers and indigenous peoples, shaping the social processes of identity formation and cultural exchange.” Despite the obvious problems of objectification, photographic archives such as this one have become critically important forms of memory in the context of colonial dispossession and loss.

Photographic documentation from Belize in this period is scarce and underrepresented in relevant area studies collections in North America.

SOLD

*Now part of the coeducational Anglican Cathedral College in Belize City.

Edificación. Nos. 31-33

(Real Estate) Liga de Defensa de Propietarios de Casas. Edificación: Órgano Oficial de la Liga de Defensa de Propietarios de Casas. Nos. 31-33. Mexico, D.F.: N.p., 1950. Three issues, each 11-¾ x 8-⅝ in., 32, 24, 24, pp.; stapled pictorial wraps, worn.

Along with the Union de Propietarios de la Ciudad de México, the Liga was involved in lobbying for the rights of property owners and representing their concerns in many urban planning decisions made during Mexico City’s explosive 20th-century growth. Few copies of their members’ magazine have survived, it offers practical advice, legal analysis, real estate and rental classifieds, and columns dedicated to architecture and design.

SOLD

Seis Discursos

(Communism) (Women) (Radio) [Ibárruri, Dolores]. La Pasionaria. Seis Discursos. N.p., n.d. [ca. 1942]. 8vo, 24 pp., pictorial wrappers, toned.

Reprinting the text of 6 radio addresses given by the Spanish communist leader from her exile in the USSR in 1942. They were delivered via a short-wave radio program (known as Radio España Independiente or La Pirenaica) that Ibárruri founded with support from the Komintern to provide news and leftist commentary to sympathetic dissidents still living in Francoist Spain. The present texts were broadcast in January and March, 1942, mostly from Kuybyshev, where the Soviet government and foreign embassies had been evacuated from Moscow. Two of the speeches are on rights of women (“A las mujeres del mundo” and “¡Escuchad Mujeres del Mundo!”); four are about the actions of the Division Azul (a unit of Spanish volunteers in the Nazi Wehrmacht that took part in the siege of Leningrad, ongoing at the time of Ibárruri’s radio program).

Ibárruri’s son Ruben was a machine gun commander in the Red Army, he died in action in September 1942, during the siege. It is possible these speeches were written after his death.

Unrecorded. This example discovered in Mexico City, possibly printed there under the auspices of Mexican or Spanish Communists?

SOLD

Para las Madres ...

(Maternal Health and Child Care) (Eugenics) Departamento de Salubridad, México. Para las Madres …. México, D.F.: D.A.P.P., 1939. 8vo, 64 pp.; 8 b/w pls., in pictorial stapled wrappers, rubbed and sunned. Good.

Propagandistic public health booklet promoting the connection between healthful, clean mothers and children and a strong society and nation. Including a section on the “certificado pre-nupcial,” a required premarital medical exam that was a part of the post-Revolutionary regulation of the national (“la gran familia mexicana’‘) family. The Mexican Eugenics Society was actively involved in the creation and implementation of these laws. Focusing on hygiene and care before marriage, during pregnancy, birth, and infancy, with sections on STDS, labor, early schooling, and the prevention of common infant diseases.

SOLD

CAV: Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de Venezuela. No. 5. 25

(Architecture) Colegio de Arquitectos de Venezuela. CAV: Revista del Colegio de Arquitectos de Venezuela. No. 5. 25. [Caracas]: [Collegio de Arquitectos de Venezuela], [1968]. 4to, 44 pp.; chiefly illus., interior very good; wrappers creased, spine starting.

Fifth issue (known as both No. 5 and No. 25) of the rare Venezuelan architecture magazine, profiling the work of Manuel Mujica Millan. Early issues uncommon institutionally and in the trade.

SOLD

Labor pro menores

(Juvenile Rehabilitation) (Socialism) (Photography) Secretaria de Gobernacion, Departamento de Prevención Social. Labor pro menores. México, 1939. 4to, 78 pp.; 9 pp. of introductory text followed by a chiefly illus. review of remedial institutions for juvenile delinquents, incl. one folding chart, very good. Illus. wrapper glued to stapled text block, wrapper stained and abraded, some separation, spine starting, fair.

Excellent, rare example of Cárdenas-era government propaganda. Espousing the revolutionary commitment to the social rehabilitation of children and providing an etiology of juvenile delinquency in Mexico from 1927-1931, the book celebrates newly built workshops and homes for boys and girls. Covers juvenile tribunals, vocational training, commercial enterprises, schooling, sports, and medical services.

Printed in the workshop of the boy’s vocational school.

One copy discoverable through OCLC: NYPL.

SOLD

Cuautitlán Izcalli. Año I, Núm 1 and Año I, Núm 3

(Urban Design) Cuautitlán Izcalli. Año I, Núm 1(Enero 1972); Año I, Núm 3 (Marzo 1972). [Mexico, D.F.]: N.p., 1972. 2 vols: 31; 32 pp.; reproductions in color of maps, plans, infographics, and photographs, edited by Leon Garcia Soler and designed by Andrea Valeria de Gout. With multiple folding leaves per issue and deluxe printing options including clear plastic interleaves and foil wrappers. Generally very good, except no. 1 with losses to the foil wrappers at extremities (see images).

Officially established in 1973, the CDMX municipality of Cuautitlán Izcalli was planned as a self-sufficient, independent city, modeled after European and American urban designs. This magazine promoted the new area in a modern, stylized publication with psychedelic typography and sections on ecology, housing, commercial sectors, and urban forestry.

The original designs for Cuautitlán Izcalli—a Náhuatl phrase meaning “su casa entre los arboles”— were never fully realized. The earthquake of 1985 drove migration to areas outside of seismic activity, including Cuautitlán Izcalli, overwhelming the urban planners and creating large zones of adhoc sprawl.

Unrecorded in OCLC.

SOLD

El Paraíso de los Dulces Mexicanos

Galeria Universitaria Aristos. El Paraíso de los Dulces Mexicanos. México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, n.d. [1968]. Square 8vo, [16] pp.; primarily visual, some reproductions in color, with [2] pp. wove paper insert. Stapled color pictorial wraps, extremities worn.

Exh. cat. exploring the sculptural artistry of Mexican confectionaries. Surrealist and Pop overtones. With text and images by artists associated with UNAM in the late 1960s including Olga Costa and Victor Fosado.

OCLC finds one US holding: UCSD.

SOLD

Collection of Ephemera Related to Harm Drenth, the “West Virginia Bluebeard” Killer

(True Crime) (Serial Killers) [Drenth, Harm]. Collection of Correspondence, Photographs, and Publications related to Harm Drenth, the “West Virginia Bluebeard” Killer, 1924-1932.

Dutch-born Harm Drenth (1892-1932), a.k.a. Herman Drenth, Harry Powers, and Cornelius O. Pierson, preyed on women he met through matrimonial correspondence agencies and lonely heart’s clubs in the 1920s and early 1930s. Claiming to be a wealthy civil engineer, he wooed widows across the US with expertly written love letters. After developing ardent postal relationships, he traveled to continue his courtship in person. Lucky correspondents were robbed. The unlucky were tortured and killed. He was caught in 1931 in Quiet Dell, West Virginia and hanged; his story became the basis for the celebrated film Night of the Hunter (1955), written by James Agee and starring Robert Mitchum. The present collection includes many items found among Drenth’s possessions at the time of his arrest and given to a local newspaper editor, Heister G. Rhawn by the District Attorney. It comprises a striking and sometimes disturbing group of materials, including items possibly linking Drenth to other crimes.

When caught, Drenth was married to one of his correspondents, Louella Strother, and living under the alias Harry Powers. They had settled in Louella’s hometown of Quiet Dell where she owned a small grocery. As Mr. Powers, he had continued his con from a post office box in nearby Clarksburg, receiving as many as 20 letters a day and traveling often to meet, rob, and murder the women who wrote him. In August of 1931, two missing widows, Mrs. D. A. Lemke of Northboro, MA, and Mrs. A. B. Eicher of Park Ridge, IL, were traced to his home through their correspondences and found buried next to the garage, together with Mrs. Eicher’s three children. The women had been bound and gassed, the children bludgeoned. In his confession he said the pleasure of watching them die “beat any cat house I was ever in.” Drenth tried to destroy most of his correspondence before he was caught, but after his arrest, police found at approximately 40 letters from Louella to Powers during their courtship in 1926-1927, nine of which are included in the present collection, together with a manuscript introductory letter presumably used to draft his first letter to a new mark. These revealing letters belied Louella’s initial claim that they had been high school sweethearts and provided evidence of Drenth’s tactics from the victim’s point-of-view. The press used them to speculate on why Louella had been spared and vilify her for their sexual content.

Drenth was eventually accused in the disappearance of many other women, but lacking evidence, he was convicted only of the five Quiet Dell murders and sentenced to death. This collection sheds new light on the sexual nature of Drenth’s crimes. While his own prurience is well-documented, the existing literature has passed over the “liberating” sexual instruction he provided for his victims. The present and otherwise unrecorded(?) contemporary pamphlet Love Secrets of Bluebeard, Containing the Famous ‘Unprintable’ Letter, describes these methods and quotes at length from letters whose location is presently unknown. Drenth’s house was full of “books dealing exclusively with sex. [...] He had books of love letters. [...] He knew how to arouse in a woman, by a slow, gradual system of building up of emotions, a great sexual longing in a woman…“ The pamphlet reproduces a lengthy “unprintable” letter from Drenth to one of his victims recommending a number of sex instruction books (copies of which he had sent previously, including Havelock Ellis). He tells his correspondent how to read them, encouraging her to take notes and ask questions. Emphasizing the importance of a healthy sex instinct, he suggests that she write her own sexual history and exchange it with him before they meet.

Unusual first-hand documentation of a notorious crime which was sensationalized in the national press.

SOLD

Contents

Items given to Heister G. Rhawn, editor of the Clarksburg Exponent, at the time of the trial:

1. Two pp. undated template letter, written in pen by Drenth, apparently used for formulating his introductory letter to female pen-pals. Describing his appearance and his income, he writes “my wife can have anything, within reason, that money can buy.” He offers to exchange photos and closes with the request “Please write.” He signs C.O. Pierson (“‘Connie’ for short”), the alias under which he wooed and killed Mrs. Eicher.
2. 3x5 photograph of Drenth, of the type he used in his correspondence.
3. Eight postcards, 1924-1926, written by five different women and addressed to Drenth in Mansfield Ohio under various aliases (most Harry Powers).
4. Photo-postcard of Maud L. Johnson, of Fairfield, Ill., who disappeared in 1929, and was probably one of Drenth’s victims. Name and address written verso in Drenth’s hand?
5. Nine letters, 1926-1927, each 2-10 pp., written in ink by Drenth’s wife, Luella Strother. Sent before their marriage, they give a sense of the sexual tenor of his correspondence with his victims. Includes several letters from their first month of correspondence. One with annotations in Drenth’s hand, another faded, each will original paper-clips, some marking from rust. Handwriting clear, easily legible.
6. TLS to Mrs. D.A. Lamke [sic], dated Oct. 1927, from the New Home Club agency, “Cupid’s Headquarters.” Mrs. Lemke is notified that the club will have other members write directly to her. One of these ended up being Drenth [a.k.a. Harry Powers].

Together with a number of items assembled by Rhawn or his daughter, Harriette Rhawn Behringer:

1. TLS from Detroit Chief of Detectives, dated Sept. 1931, advising the Clarksburg police that Drenth/Powers had been supplied with 300 names per month by the American Friendship Society matrimonial agency.
2. Single page telegram from the Omaha World Herald, Aug. 1931., enquiring of the Clarksburg newspaper whether any of the letters discovered among Drenth’s papers were from Iowan women.
3. Two pp. wire service release, presumably from the Clarksburg paper, The Exponent(?), announcing Drenth’s execution. Badly toned, chipped, and separated where folded. Fair.
4. Charleston, West Virginia Gazette clipping, March 1932, covering execution of Powers. Folded, toned.
5. Two copies of an unrecorded contemporary pamphlet on the case: Love Secrets of Bluebeard, Containing the Famous “Unprintable” Letter [title from cover]. Np. Nd. (ca. 1931-1932, before the execution). 8vo, 14 pp., illus. Pictorial yellow wrappers worn.
6. Clipping of a retrospective article on the case, published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, March 1967.
7. Stapled pieces of an undated, redacted TLS from Behringer explaining her father’s relationship to the case and offering the materials for sale.

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).

SOLD

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.

SOLD

(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.

SOLD

(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.

SOLD

(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.

SOLD

(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.

SOLD

34 Photographs of San Francisco Gay Motorcycle Club Events

(Sexuality) (Motorcycle Clubs) (California) 34 Photographs of San Francisco Gay Motorcycle Club Events, ca. 1973-1976. Silver prints, each 5 x 7 in., a few slightly curled, one with a small area of discoloration. Very Good+.

Scarce documentation from San Francisco’s male-only gay motorcycle clubs which emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s in tandem with leathermen culture. The clubs were greatly influenced by gay veterans’ experience in WWII and Hollywood touchstones like The Wild Ones (1954). The organizations celebrated hypermasculinity (as opposed to prevailing effeminate gay stereotypes), leather fetishism, and BDSM.

They were, above all, social clubs. The MCs provided their members with a safe space for unapologetic sexual expression in a period during which their sexuality was still largely criminalized. They maintained anonymity in their records, and were known for their wild “runs”: multi-day bike trips to nearby wilderness areas and campgrounds—where they partied hard and avoided police surveillance. The groups reached their apex in the 1970s, when there were reportedly over 20 gay MCs in California, including the Satyrs MC (LA), Oedipus MC (LA), Blue Max MC (LA), Rainbow MC (SF), Warlocks MC, Renco (SF), San Francisco Serpents MC, The San Franciscans MC, and the Petaluma Cocks MC (SF). In addition to sponsoring and organizing runs (oftentimes for charity), clubs were identified with their specific bars in San Francisco’s leather district.

Patches, colors, and other graphics in this present group of photos identify members from many San Francisco MCs, suggesting they were taken before or after a multi-club run. A number show the presentation of trophies and prizes, presumably from bike events and competitions during the run, and many include members of the South Pacific MC, a visiting club from Australia. Several famous San Francisco leather clubs on Folsom Street’s “Miracle Mile” may be identified in the photographs, including Boot Camp.

The crowded, carousing scenes represent the uninhibited atmosphere of the halcyon days of San Francisco’s leather scene before HIV/AIDS. Rare, only ONE Archives at USC seems to have similar documentation.

SOLD

Atlas de las Nubes para el Servicio meteorológico de la República Mexicana

Pastrana, Manuel E. Atlas de las Nubes para el Servicio meteorológico de la República Mexicana formado por Manuel E. Pastrana i del Observatorio Meteorológico Central de México [...]. Boston, MA: Heliotype Co., 1906. Oblong 4to, [9] leaves, 61, [4] pls.; introduction by Pastrana followed by plates, nos. 1-20, 22, 29, 31-34, 41-58, and 60 in color, very good; stamped publisher’s cloth with marbled endpapers; boards rubbed, corners bumped. Numbered 135 in ink on title, from stated edition of 1000.

The first cloud atlas produced for use by the Mexican meteorological service; most images reproduced from photographs taken at La Escuela Industrial Militar Porfirio Diaz in Morelia, Mexico. At the time of printing, the national meteorological service was comprised of 49 observatories, including one in each state. Each reported by telegraph to the central observatory in Tacubaya. The atlas’s classification and captions follow the recommendations of the 1891 International Meteorological Conference, Munich, and the first International Cloud Atlas (Hildebrandsson, Riggenbach, and Teisserenc de Bort, 1896).

Four US holdings listed in OCLC: UT, UNM, SDSU, and Stanford.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

(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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Cultura Física y Sexual. All Published

Martin de Lucenay, Ángel. Cultura Física y Sexual. Vol. 1, Tomo 1 (Dec. 1935) through Vol. 3, Tomo 3 (June 1936) [all published]. Barcelona: Editorial Cisne, 1935-1936.

Small 4to, 13 issues bound in three vols., orig. wrappers bound-in, each 72-160 pp., Vols. 1 and 2 each comprised of five issues, Vol. 3 of three issues, subtitles vary; illus. b/w pls, approx. 4-8 per issue, most credited to the Foto Mayo studio; tan calf with printed labels to spine, rubbed and bumped, labels abraded with losses, interior very good.

A complete run of the Guerra Civil-era pulp sexuality series by author and sexologist Dr. Ángel Martin de Lucenay. Two years earlier Lucenay developed a progressive sexual education series with another popular Republican press, Editoral Fénix. In this new version, for Cisne, Lucenay largely abandoned the political aspects of his project in favor of a titillating, sometimes racist narrative about human sexuality. Pseudo-scientific topics provide the opportunity for nude and medical photography, including sports and sexual health, normal and abnormal physiology, race and sexuality, euphoric drugs, sex and gymnastics, etc. Many political references remain; the Soviet sex education curriculum and sports system are offered as ideal education programs.

Most of the nude photography is credited to Foto Mayo, a family studio well-known before the Guerra Civil for its anarchist and communist sympathies. Their photojournalism of the Guerra Civil made them famous and at the end of the war the three brothers were forced to flee to Mexico, where their studio, renamed Hermanos Mayo, continued to cover political violence, including the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968.

Rare Republican sexuality series, OCLC lists only one complete run in institutional holdings worldwide, none in North America.

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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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En La Ruta De La Amistad. México 68: Programa cultural de la XIX Olimpiada

Comité Organizador de los Juegos de la XIX Olimpiada. En La Ruta de La Amistad. México 68: Programa cultural de la XIX Olimpiada. México, D.F.: 1968. Spanish edition. Square 8vo, [44] pp.; each artist’s project illus. in b/w with route map and bios, sl. toned; in pictorial color wrappers with design attributed to Lance Wyman, extremities rubbed, fore-edge thumbed; good.

Catalogue of an ambitious public sculpture project designed to “bring contemporary art and the public together through total planning.” All the works were commissioned by an Olympic Committee and executed in concrete. Participants included: (in order of appearance) Ángela Gurría; Willi Gutmann; Miloslav Chlupáč; Kioshi Takahashi; Pierre Székely; Gonzalo Fonseca; Costantino Nivola; Jacques Moeschal; Todd Williams; Grzegorz Kowalski; Clement Meadmore; Herbert Bayer; Joop J Beljon; Itzhak Danziger; Olivier Seguin; Muhhammad Maliihi; Helen Escobedo; and Jorge Dubón. The monumental works lined the “Route of Friendship” leading to the Olympic Stadium. Most remain in their original sites, despite being abandoned by the government.

A scarce iteration of the iconic ‘68 Olympic graphics. New scholarship credits Beatrice Trueblood, director of Olympic publications, and the architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, for the design, in addition to Wyman.

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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.

SOLD

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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Cartilla Maya-Español para los monolingües Mayas de Yucatan, Campeche y Quintana Roo

[Beloff, Angelina. (Illustrator)]. Instituto de Alfabetización en Lenguas Indígenas, México. Cartilla Maya-Español para los monolingües Mayas de Yucatan, Campeche y Quintana Roo. México, D.F.: [Secretaría de Educación Pública], 1946. Small 4to, 102 pp.; illus. reader, unmarked, newsprint pages toned, fragile, and chipped, a few leaves unopened; in color pictorial wraps, with closed tears and losses, fair.

A Maya-Spanish children’s primer, part of the Secretary of Education’s campaign against illiteracy, particularly among indigenous, monolingual populations. These federal initiatives had mixed results and were largely unsuccessful at achieving larger social improvements in rural communities.

This edition illustrated by artists Angelina Beloff and Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, both associated with the muralist movement (Beloff through her marriage to Diego Rivera).

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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.

SOLD

Untitled

Yampolsky, Mariana. Untitled. ca. 1945-55. Linoleum cut, image: 7 x 3-1/2 in., sheet approx.: 9-1/4 x 7-7/8 in.; top edge sl. foxed, not affecting image. Signed in pencil, further inscribed by the artist in pen to Madam Hedwig Reducing Salon “Good for one facial [...] call for appointment before November 1, 1955.”

Yampolsky (1925-2002) immigrated to México from the US in 1945. That year she was hired by the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP)—the only woman working in the TGP studios at the time. She became a celebrated illustrator and photographer and, in 1958, a Mexican citizen.

This print is emblematic of her TGP-era style and was seemingly offered to a salon in exchange for a facial treatment. As “occasional art,” an emerging way of describing art either produced for special occasions, gifted, or bartered, it offers a disruptive context for understanding the production and distribution of art.

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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.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

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.”

SOLD

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.

HOLD

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.

SOLD

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.

SOLD

[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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