lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on the periodic and the ephemeral

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96961 Baglee, Christopher, & Andrew Morley Street Jewellery A History of Enamel Advertising Signs New Cavendish Books, London, 1979. Quarto paperback; 87pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. A few scattered spots to early and late pages; spotting to text block edges; mild wear to cover corners and edges. Very good to near fine. The enamel advertising sign - the precursor of today's billboard and sticker - flourished in the pre-inflationary era, when a product and its price could be advertised with the certainty of some permanence. They also flourished in the days before consumer protection, and signs would often display outrageous claims on behalf of the products advertised. Chris Baglee and Andrew Morley, ardent devotees of the subject, trace the history of this fast-disappearing advertising medium from its confident birth in the mid-Nineteenth Century to its virtual demise in the 1950s. Click here to order $23

92495 Cooke, Simon Illustrated Periodicals of the 1860s Contexts & Collaborations Private Libraries Association, The British Library/ Oak Knoll Press, London, 2010. Quarto hardcover; purple cloth boards with gilt spine titling; 228pp., monochrome illustrations. Minor wear only; fine in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. "A detailed, historical reconstruction of the essential character of illustrated periodicals in Britain in the 1860s. Considers the complex interrelationships between publishers, editors, artists, engravers, and authors and their effects on creative output. Illustrated in grayscale with more than 120 reproductions of engravings and preparatory drawings." Click here to order $60

83774 Crisp, Alan CGT - The French Line: A History in Postcards La Compagnie Generale Transatlantique Tabella, 2011. Quarto; hardcover; 198pp., with many colour and monochrome illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. Founded in 1854, the CGT has represented for France what the White Star Line has meant for Britain (only without the titanic stain to its reputation). In this comprehensive overview, Alan Crisp takes us on a review of the fleet, offering us the physical specifications of each ship accompanied by a postcard displaying its splendid outline, taken from the high point of its sailing career. Along with all the technical detail is a potted history of each vessel giving a fascinating insight into the accomplishments of this European service. Click here to order $38

35216 Crowell, Ivan H. Horn Craft Macmillan Craftmen's Library, No.18 Macdonald College, Quebec Canada, 1945. Octavo; stapled pamphlet with card covers; 16pp., with many half-tone illustrations. Minor wear; some pencilling to the front cover. Very good. "The information in this pamphlet is presented very much like a report similar in some respects to those which research workers frequently make. One outstanding reason guided me in using this method of presentation. In order to write this pamphlet I had to start with practically no information at all. I learned all that is written here by talking with friends, reading what other people had written about the craft and by experimenting with different kinds of horn to make various kinds of articles. This is the underlying principle of research or investigative work. You too can obtain tremendous pleasure and make real contributions to our knowledge by solving problems even about the use of cow's horn. The principle applies widely. Try it in all your craft problems." (The author.) Click here to order $5

98620 Cruikshank, George The Drunkard's Children A Sequel to "The Bottle" The Broadsheet King, London, 1966. Facsimile reprint: folio; printed folding portfolio; 8 monochrome engraved leaves (290mm x 450mm). Minor wear; folder scuffed. Very good to near fine. A Victorian "Rake's Progress" depicting the steady downturn in the lives of a brother and sister born into a gin-sodden world under the tutelage of their dissipated father. Click here to order $40

90693 Davidson, Joe Fruit Crate Art Wellfleet Press, Secaucus NJ, 1990. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titling; 144pp., with many colour illustrations. Minor wear; spotting to upper text block edges and a few scattered spots to the half-title page edges. Dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. In an art world replete with "limited editions" of 5,000 or more, many fruit crate labels exist in much lower quantities and are probably a better investment. Herein, you will find a brief history of the industry and lithographers that created them, and their relationship to the brokers and consumers. This book contains coloured photographs of fruit and vegetable labels found on wooden boxes and a history of the labels, art, and advertising associated with them. Also included are examples of the various methods of lithography used in label creation. Click here to order $30

200915 Dobson, Rosemary Australia - Land of Colour Through the Eyes of Australian Painters; Thirty-Two Plates in Colour Introduced Ure Smith/Waite & Bull Pty. Ltd, Sydney NSW, 1962. Octavo; stapled booklet; 32pp., with many colour illustrations. Minor wear; text block and page edges lightly toned. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed and edgeworn. Very good with original illustrated mailer. Click here to order $20

96819 Edge, Ruth, & Leonard Petts (eds.) A Guide to Collecting His Master's Voice 'Nipper' Souvenirs EMI Music Archives, Hayes Middlesex UK, 1984. Octavo; paperback; 311pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; spine sunned. Near fine. The famous dog shown on the EMI "His Master's Voice" label was called "Nipper". Such was the popularity of the image that people began collecting depictions of Nipper in all his advertising permutations. This remains the essential reference tool for those inclined. Click here to order $30

56018 Edwards, Rhoda Lambeth Stoneware The Woolley Collection including Doulton Ware and products of other British Potteries Borough of Lambeth, London, 1973. Quarto; paperback; 24pp., with monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; text block edges toned; covers lightly tarnished; edges worn. Good to very good. This is a catalogue of one of England's largest collections of Lambeth Stoneware, the company which would later become Royal Doulton. The earliest pottery and stoneware from the original company - Jones Watts & Doulton in 1815 - was created using the skills of the students of the nearby Lambeth School of Art. As the company shifted its nature to more strongly accommodate the tastes of its clientele, the earlier styles and forms were discontinued and these now are considered hugely collectable. This catalogue not only lists the many exemplar pieces in the Woolley Collection, but also shows the numerous marks used by the early student potters which readily identify a piece of true Lambeth stoneware. Click here to order $12

98617 Fawdry, Kenneth (ed.) Toy Theatre Pollock's Toy Theatres Ltd., London, 1980. Quarto; paperback, with illustrated wrappers; 47pp., with a monochrome frontispiece and many illustrations likewise. Minor wear; mild rubbing to the covers. Near fine. The entirety of the toy theatre concept is brought to life in this history compiled and written by Kenneth Fawdry and put out by Pollock's Toy Theatres Ltd. Click here to order $12

81254 Flett, Trevor & Lynette kelly & Rick Milne People's Paraphernalia People's Paraphernalia, Northcote, 1987. Small quarto hardcover, illustrated boards and marbled endpapers; 128pp., colour illustrations. A few faint spots on text block edges. Minor wear only; near fine. No dustwrapper. Collecting is as old as history itself. There is ample evidence that collectors have existed in most, if not all, of the world's past civilizations. There are many theories about the origins of the collecting habit. Undoubtedly pride of possession, curiosity, the desire for knowledge, the adventure of discovery and the fun of the chase are among the main forces driving collectors. This book offers a general view of collectors in the Australian context and the kind of things they collect. Click here to order $16

76217 Frizot, Michel, & Cedric de Veigy VU The Story of a Magazine Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 2009. Quarto; hardcover; 320pp. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. Published between the years 1928 to 1940, this weekly magazine covered an eclectic range of subjects including politics and current events, social issues, discoveries, disasters, the arts, sports and entertainment. It used photomontage as a vehicle for pointed political or social criticism, in particular through the work of Alexander Liberman, who was art director from 1932 and had worked with Cassandre, who designed the Vu logo. The printing technique known as rotogravure gave VU's layout artists more creative leeway and gave new power to the work by photographers including Kertesz, Man Ray, Krull, Lotar and Brassai. Vu was where the modern status of photography in the media was first established; it was where pictures first took precedence over words, and where text was relegated to a supporting role. Click here to order $50

55412 Froggatt, Walter W. Notes on a Collection of Australian and Other Myriapoda From the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 1915, Vol. xl., Part 4, October 27th Linnean Society of New South Wales, Sydney NSW, 1916. Octavo; stapled pamphlet; 2pp. Foxed covers with some wear; page edges lightly foxed. Good. This brochure contains an overview of species of millipedes and centipedes kept within the collections of the Australian Museum in Sydney, comparing these with the collections of two other researchers in this fairly specific field of enterprise - the author's and that of his correspondent, a Mr. Brolemann, who also delivered an overview and summation of the Museum's collection in 1912. Within its covers is a short list of species represented in the Museum's holdings, and notations by the author of where and when he too, acquired specimens for his own collection. Click here to order $4

51529 Gold-Tooled Bookbindings Bodleian Picture Books The Bodleian Library, Oxford UK, 1951. Octavo; stapled booklet; 7pp., with 24pp. of black and white plates. Mild wear; very minor spotting to the covers. Else near fine. Gold-tooled bookbindings are those in which the leather or vellum is decorated by impressing patterns with a hot tool on gold leaf, a technique which probably derived from the Moors. It appears to have been use in Aragon in the first half of the fifteenth century. By 1480 gold-tooling had been fully developed in Italy and then spread to France and elsewhere. Bindings selected represent the many different styles current in Europe up to the eighteenth century. Click here to order $15

97605 Griffith, David, & Charlotte Parry-Crooke Decorative Printed Tins The Golden Age of Printed Tin Packaging Studio Vista Books/Cassell Ltd., London, 1979. Quarto; hardcover, with silver-gilt spine titles; 96pp. with many monochrome and full-colour illustrations. Mild wear; previous owner's ink stamp to the flyleaf. Dustwrapper rubbed with an old price sticker to the front flap; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. In 1971 the Victoria and Albert Museum first held an exhibition of biscuit tins, establishing the validity of the printed tin as an object of serious interest. Many of these tins are indeed works of art, inspiring respect for an age when such care was taken over the packaging of ordinary household goods like tea and mustard. As many as twelve separate colour printings were used to obtain the delicacy and richness of the illustrations and rivalry between companies led to increasingly adventurous designs, pushing construction processes to their limits. The technical peak of tin production was the famous novelty tins, some minutely detailed replicas of books, picnic hampers and birds' nests, others with ingenious moving parts: a grandfather clock, a windmill, even an articulated lorry. Covetable objects in their own right, printed tins are also fascinating in their reflection of changing social attitudes and world events. This book is a record of the golden age of British printed tins. Click here to order $17

73524 Hinckley, C.T. A Day at the Bookbindery of Lippincott, Grambo, & Co. Oak Knoll Books, New Castle DE, 1988. Small folio; decorated stapled wrappers; 16pp., on laid paper, with many engravings. Minor wear; wrapper mildly sunned and the bottom corner slightly bumped. Near fine. A Christmas release from the famous Oak Knoll Books company, this is a facsimile reprint of an 1852 article from the Godey's Lady's Book of Philadelphia, showing the daily round of activity at Lippincot's bookbindery. The article is aimed at diverting and informing ladies of the day and doesn't stint on detail: this is a peek backwards in time to the early years of mass book construction and dissemination. One of a limited print run of only 750 copies. Click here to order $15

96511 Lardner, Dionysius The Electric Telegraph Popularised With one hundred illustrations Lockwood & Co., London, nd. (c.1874). Octavo; hardcover, half-bound in green calf with gilt rules, upper board and spine decorations and gilt spine titles on a red morocco label; 653pp., text block edges marbled, with many engraved illustrations. Moderate wear; covers rubbed and edgeworn; corners bumped with some fraying; book prize plate tipped-in to the front pastedown; light scattered foxing throughout. Very good. This lavish binding collects several pamphlets written by the indefatigable Dionysius Lardner on various aspects of Physics, but concentrating primarily on those which outline the state of the art of telegraphy at the time. Presented as a prize by the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol to a colleague who had succeeded in government scientific examinations, this compilation surely indicates the career path upon which this fellow was about to set forth. Beginning with a history and overview of the technology involved with the telegraph, the pamphlets discuss the apparatus's use in meteorology and astronomy as well as the relevant mechanical skills that would be useful in overseeing the operation of such a device. In the final few chapters such things as the physical operation of mirrors and a discussion of how poets record physical phenomena in their work and incompetently assign such things to 'higher powers' rather than natural forces in action. As a miscellany of scientific observations, this volume will provide many hours of useful and enlightening reading. Click here to order $80

84248 Mullen, Chris Cigarette Pack Art The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd./Ventura Publishing Ltd., London, 1979. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 128pp. with many monochrome and full-colour illustrations. Slightly rolled; top text block edge mildly toned. Price-clipped dustwrapper is mildly edgeworn, sunned along the spine and with some minor tears to the spine panel extremities (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Very good. From Luckies to Woodbines, Player's to Gitanes, Cherry to Camels, cigarette packs are pop art at its finest. Covering the historical development and wide-ranging themes of pack design, Cigarette Pack Art explores the fascinating relationships between cigarettes packs and popular culture, and describes the effect of changing trends in graphic art and design over the last century. Click here to order $40

87561 Ouellette, William (intro. Barbara Jones) Fantasy Postcards Doubleday, New York NY, nd [1975]. Landscape quarto; paperback, with illustrated wrappers; 96pp., with many monochrome and full-colour illustrations. Light foxing to preliminaries; previous owner's ink inscription to the half-title; wrappers worn and curling with some creasing, and the lacquer lifting along the hinges. Good. In this extraordinary album of postcards dating from the late Belle Epoque through the Great War, William Ouellette has chosen from his own collection rare marvels of the fanciful, the erotic and the bizarre. Among the more than 250 postcards reproduced in colour and in black and white are dreamlike images the likes of which later influenced the Surrealists, fantasies created by the sender, and serious, straightforward documents which reveal today layers of meaning not intended or recognised in their time. The author's witty juxtapositions and notes reveal an artist's insight into this new point of view, whereby the accidental, the ambiguous and the illogical stimulate a modern fantasy interpretation of past reality. Fantasy Postcards is both a revelation of the boundless imagination of the anonymous popular artist, and a guide to the delightful possibilities of reverie, encouraging us to discover, believe and enjoy fantasies of our own creation. Click here to order $25

93665 Phillips, Tom (Foreword by David Lodge) Readers Vintage People on Photo Postcards The Bodleian Library, Oxford UK, 2010. Octavo; hardcover, with illustrated boards; 112pp., with many monochrome illustrations. No dustwrapper as issued. Remainder. New. Readers, as its title suggests, shows people reading (or pretending to read) a wide variety of material, from the Bible to Film Fun, either in the photographer's studio, in their own home, or on vacation at the beach. Click here to order $16

93664 Phillips, Tom (Foreword by Giles Waterford) Weddings Vintage People on Photo Postcards The Bodleian Library, Oxford UK, 2011 Octavo; hardcover, with illustrated boards; 112pp., with many monochrome illustrations. No dustwrapper as issued. Remainder. New. To celebrate the acquisition of the archive of distinguished artist Tom Phillips, the Bodleian Library asked the artist to assemble and design a series of books drawing on his themed collection of over 50,000 photographic postcards. These encompass the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, ordinary people could afford to purchase their own portraits. These portraits allowed individuals to create and embellish their own self images, presenting themselves as they wished to be seen within the trends and social mores of their time. Each book in the series contains two hundred images chosen from a visually rich vein of social history. Their back covers also feature thematically linked paintings, specially created for each title, from Phillips's signature work, A Humument. Weddings captures all the excitement and drama of the stages of the ceremony from preparations to wedding vehicles to family and friends in lively scenes in churches and homes. Click here to order $16

91271 [Radio and Hobbies in Australia] Radio and Hobbies in Australia, Vol.1, No.1 (April 1939) Radio and Hobbies, n.p., 1939. Octavo; paperback, stapled booklet; 72pp, with many monochrome illustrations. Foxing and toned pages; mild wear only to paper covers. Very good. Click here to order $30

91867 Scott, Kathryn Leigh (Foreword by Joan Bennett) Lobby Cards The Classic Films Bloomsbury, London, 1988. Landscape quarto; hardcover, with silver gilt spine and upper board titling and upper board decoration; 174pp., with many colour illustrations. Minor wear; small scuff marks on rear board; faint spotting to upper text block edges. Dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. Lobby cards, like posters and photographic stills, have been issued by movie studios to publicise their films. Exotic, romantic, dramatic or funny, beautifully designed placards enticed audiences into movie theatres all around the nation. Rare and historically significant this collection recalls great film classics like Broken Blossoms - D W Griffiths's 1919 silent film starring Lillian Gish - to Casablanca, an all time favourite. Valentino, Chaplin, Dietrich, Bogart, Garbo, Cagney and Crawford are among the many film stars who appear in this book. Click here to order $28