Catalogue 32 - Marilyn Braiterman

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43.
42.
HANDCOLORED COPY
42. (KENT, ROCKWELL) VOLTAIRE, JEAN FRANÇOIS.
CANDIDE, OR, OPTIMISM.
New York: Random House, 1928. 4to, gilt-lettered quarter-morocco
and patterned boards. Fine. Of 1450 signed by Rockwell Kent,
this is one of only 95 copies specially bound and with all of the
illustrations hand-colored in the artist’s studio. Illustrated title page,
copyright page, colophon, thirty initials and 78 vignettes by Kent, all
handcolored.
A landmark of the American illustrated book with elegantly satirical
vignettes and decorated initials integrated into the text of Voltaire’s
masterpiece. “Optimism” was the philosophical doctrine that this
world is the best of all possible worlds. Kent’s illustration of a house
on the colophon page- depicting the home where Candide and his
friends cultivated their garden after their horrific adventures- is still
used as the Random House logo.
One of the books included in the Grolier Club’s The Best of Both
Worlds/Finely Printed Livres d’Artistes 1910-2010 . “Both the thin,
sharp Bernhard font and Rockwell Kent’s line drawings were modern for
their time, yet both speak of the 1920s to today’s eyes…Monroe Wheeler,
director of exhibitions and publications at the Museum of Modern
Art, cited it as an exemplary union of printing, artist, and text…” Jake
Milgram Wien, Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern. $2500
43. (KOCH, RUDOLF) DIE HEILUNG DES BESESSENEN
(THE HEALING OF THE MAN POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL/
GOSPEL OF LUKE).
Offenbach: Rudolfinischer Drucke, 1919. 4to, hand-colored
wrappers in a foliate woodcut pattern in green and black with spots of
yellow and red. Fine, uncut and unopened, in modern custom green
linen clamshell box with two leather spine labels.One of 200 copies.
A block-book , a pre-Gutenberg practice, incorporating on one block
of wood both the illustration and the lettering. Each page of text
printed on one side of leaf only in Koch’s dramatic Gothic typeface
with an Expressionist woodcut, woodcut initials and ornaments . The
private press Rudolfinische Drucke was a collaboration of Rudolf
Koch and Rudolf Gerstung (1911-1924). This was their ninth
production. Koch was an eminent typographer, type designer and
calligrapher in Germany in the early twentieth century.
Rodenberg, Deutsche Pressen, page 126. Cinnamon, Rudolph Koch,
page 57: “These block-books of 1919-20 establish Koch’s position in the
German Expressionist movement of this period and…demonstrate Koch’s
astonishing graphic power and the height of his religious intensity.”
$1250
Rare Books · Catalogue 32