Tobacco poster. Old Gold Cut Plug. Rochester NY, Wm S. Kimball & Co (c1900?). Chromolithograph poster 55x36cm with metal strips at top and bottom with hanging loop at the top. A crease, a surface blemish to the left hand side, some small tears and scratches; not perfect but still pretty good.
With a smaller Kimball chromolithograph card 28x16cm of a more modest but still morally questionable young woman (c1890?). Au$800

A masterpiece of the offensive - so much packed into a couple of square feet of ink and paper. I haven't been so impressed by the economy in insult to at least three quarters of the world since I got a set of Zulu Lulu swizzle sticks (beware of recent imitations, by the way).
American drawn (signed Van) and American printed (by the Stecher Lithographic Co. of Rochester) but this was a Japanese shop poster. A fair amount of Kimball trade card beauties float around and a series of darker skinned 'natives' but I can't find anything remotely like this. Was it judged too ripe for an American audience and shipped off to tantalise and amuse Japanese smokers?
The accompanying card is too large to be a trade card for customers and was presumably for shop display.

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Architecture. Nathaniel Billing & Son. Universal Building Societies. Pamphlet of Useful Information for Persons Wishing Either to Build, Borrow, or Invest. Melbourne, printed by Sands & McDougall 1884. Octavo later marbled wrapper using old paper; 16,[16]pp including 15 house designs with floor plans and colour lithograph elevations. Foxing. sold

There's no such thing as a common 19th century Australian architecture book or pamphlet. Pretty much there's no such thing as a 19th century Australian architecture book in the usual sense. The subject must be approached via some side path: locally used copies of imported pattern books, trade catalogues, reports ...
Here, in this advertisement for a building society, we have a slight but splendid pattern book of homes designed by Billing & Son, from a glorified garden shed at £100 to a pair of semi-detached brick dwellings at £1400.

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KOOY, J.M.J. & J.W.H. UYTENBOGAART. Ballistics of the Future, with special reference to the dynamical and physical theory of the rocket weapons. Haarlem, Technical Publishing 1946. Octavo publisher's cloth; 472pp & errata slip, numerous illustrations & diagrams, three folding maps & eight folding plates. A nice copy.
A large and lurid martial bookplate was added to presentation copies, usually signed by one or the other of the authors. In this case both have signed and the book was presented to the engineer Jan Willem Ernste who was technical boffin with the Dutch authorities in exile in London during the war. sold

First edition. Kooy's wartime theoretical-mathematical thesis on the dynamics of projectiles and rockets was partly written in hiding and couldn't see the light of day until the war was finished. The publishers apparently teamed Kooy with Uytenbogaart, underground scientist hero who had set up a network to gather information on the V- weapons, and a detailed technical and scientific account of the V 1 and V 2 were added and Kooy's own conclusions revised.
"Surprisingly, the first comprehensive technical work on rocket projectiles has come from Holland. Our Dutch friends are to be congratulated on the extreme thoroughness with which they have carried out their project," wrote Val Cleaver in his review of the book in The Aeroplane (June 1948 - requoted from P.Th.L.M. van Woerkom's 2003 memoir of Uytenbogaart. Woerkom added: "This elaborate work on rocket dynamics and rocket design served as a standard textbook on space flight dynamics in many countries in the period after the War.").

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Exhibition - Dunedin 1865. Official Catalogue of the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition, 1865. Dunedin, for the Commissioners 1865. Octavo publisher's printed wrappers (a bit marked and frayed); 156,viii + 20 pages of adverts, folding plan. A pencil list of plants on the back wrapper; used but most acceptable. Au$450

New Zealand's first international exhibition, well before any other in this part of the world. Admittedly not a lot came from elsewhere apart from Tasmania and Britain but come they did. Tasmania sent more than all the other colonies combined.

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Exhibition - Melbourne 1866-67. Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia, Melbourne 1866-67. Official Record, containing, introduction, catalogues, reports and awards ... essays and statistics. [and] The Australasian colonies at the International Exhibition, London, 1862. [and] A Treatise on Australian building stones. Melbourne, Blundell 1867 [1865 & 1864]. Stout octavo publisher's cloth; xliv,9-404,iv,563,102,46pp; folding ground plan, five geological maps and plates (four folding). Minor signs of use, quite good.
Presentation copy to Nathaniel Levi - pioneer Jewish politician and businessman, including a stint as a distiller; with a printed slip on the front endpaper and his signature on the back. Loosely inserted is a carte-de-visite portrait by Andrew Rider - an award winner at the exhibition. This may or may not have anything to do with Levi. Au$1500

As well as the local colonies, New Zealand, New Caledonia and Batavia contributed. As with the 1854 and 1861 exhibitions in Melbourne this was a lead up to sending things on to Europe, in this case the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition, with the consequence that late visitors to Melbourne were met with some large gaps and sparse remnants in many cases.
The extensive series of essays include Brough Smyth on mining, Bleasdale on gems and precious stones, Mueller on vegetation, M'Coy on zoology and palaeontology, Ellery on climate, and much more.
The last two works, both by J.G Knight, on the 1862 exhibition and building stones were not added to standard copies, not even to all presentation copies.

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Exhibition - London 1873; Melbourne 1872-73 & Vienna 1873. London International Exhibition of 1873. (Melbourne, 1872-73). Official Record, containing introduction, catalogues, reports and recommendations of the experts, official awards ... Melbourne, Mason Firth &c 1873. Octavo publisher's cloth (spine ends repaired) ; xxiv,224,viii,44,32,120,160,20,12,17,34,8,30,20pp. First few pages spotted, 1873 stamp of the 'Chief Secretary's Office' on the title. Au$650

Quite uncommon. This was the first of the ambitious but fairly short series of annual international exhibitions (begun in 1871) in London to which Victoria sent a major contribution. As was usually the case a preliminary exhibition was held in Melbourne. Here we have the catalogues for this Melbourne Exhibition, the catalogue for the London Exhibition and the catalogue for the Vienna International Exhibition of 1873 in which Victoria also took part. As well as the other reports and stuff there is a series of essays, of which John Bleasdale's "On Wines" (34pp) is probably the most interesting now.
Some but not all copies have a map; the State Library of Victoria notes that only one of their copies has a map. This doesn't.

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Exhibition - Sydney 1879. Souvenir presented to I. F. Holle Esq. and family by the members of the Austrian Commission at the Sydney International Exhibition. [cover title]. n.p. (Sydney 1879). 36x45cm red morocco album decorated in gilt and titled on the front (a bit scuffed); 12 printed card leaves being the dedication printed in gold and signed by four Austrian commissioners, a portrait of the four and ten views - albumen prints - of the Austrian court and the wine and beer pavilion by Richards & Co and produced by the Government Printer. These are in discreet printed borders with credits on the back. I presume that the official photographer and official printer were both named Thomas Richards is a coincidence. sold

An impressive lump of self congratulation which doesn't detract from its documentary value. Some, perhaps many of these images may be digitised but nothing approaches an extra large, well printed original for detail. And nothing says important like an expanse of red morocco and gold leaf.
Holle - more usually J.F. Holle - was a well to do tailor and an exhibition judge. Did all the judges get an album or just the more friendly ones? I can't find any similar albums and the inscription to Holle and family suggests more personal gratitude.

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Exhibition - Sydney 1879. Notes from the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879. With photo-type illustrations. Compiled at the Government Printing Office. Sydney, Govt Printer 1880. Octavo, publisher's ornate gilt green morocco (spine a little scuffed and worn at tips); xviii,327pp, 37 photo-type plates and a small medallion portrait of the government printer Thomas Richard in the title imprint. Au$1750

Very uncommon and the best of both worlds in a way: this is both an excellent record of Australia's first international exhibition and an exhibit itself. It was produced as a specimen of printing and bookbinding for the Melbourne International Exhibition, "and especially to show the effect of Photo-type illustrations, the process being entirely new in Australia". The notes are from a "popular rather than a technical stand-point" which the writer (I suspect Thomas Richards himself) hopes will record the lessons the exhibition was designed to teach. The personal, while conscientious, approach is both appealing and useful, a valuable addition to the drier official records and about the only substantial informal guide to the Sydney Exhibition that there is.
Richards (presuming he is the author) is proud of the achievements of the Government Printing Office in binding, printing and photography - viz the portrait included in the imprint - and is gracious about the successive governments who have allowed the printery to devote energy to experimental study and the perfection of all the latest discoveries in printing. This probably says as much about Richards as it does about those goverments. They are, in the spirit of the exhibition, in the van of progress.

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Exhibition - Melbourne 1880. Report of the Executive Commissioner on the Melbourne International Exhibition 1880-81. Sydney, Govt Printer 1881. Largish octavo publisher's morocco; six autotype photo plates and two folding plans. Some foxing, mostly at each end. A handsome copy with John Chapman's bookplate. Au$650

An uncommon record from Melbourne's natural enemy but the NSW Commissioner is gracious, given that Sydney had held the first international exhibition the year before. Only in passing does he remark that it's a pity Melbourne is so flat they couldn't find an elevated spot to park their building. He doesn't mention that Melbourne is a follow up to Sydney more than three or four times a page.
Included is the catalogue of New South Wales' exhibits and list of jury award winners.

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Exhibition - London 1885-86. Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1885-86. Report of the Royal Commission for Victoria ... Melbourne, Govt printer 1887. Foolscap original half morocco; xii,103pp, six autotype or woodburytype photo plates (two folding), six wood engraved plates and a plan. Foxing at each end, still a pleasing handsome copy.
A specially bound presentation copy to Melbourne bigwig, Jenkin Collier, one of the commissioners. Au$850

The four autotypes are from Lindt photographs and I wondered why they were there until I figured out they must be exhibits and that Lindt gave 6000 copies to the Commission. Among the reports on each class, wine gets the most extensive treatment with a long report by Richard Bannister, a report of Joseph Bosisto's tour of vineyards in France and Spain and a further paper on colonial wines from Bannister.

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Exhibition - Launceston 1891. Tasmanian Exhibition, Launceston, 1891-92. Official Catalogue of the Exhibits. Launceston, printed by James Brickhill 1891. Octavo publisher's printed wrapper (chipped); xvi (adverts),181,xvii-xxiii (adverts)pp plus another four pages of adverts in the middle, folding plan. Used but most acceptable. Au$900

I confess I knew nothing of Tasmania's first international exhibition until recently, which says more about my willful blindness and the scarcity of the official catalogue and record than the exhibition itself. It was pretty big, with exhibitors from Britain, a few European countries and North America, and something close to twice the population of Tasmania visited.
This was one of Jules Joubert's successes. Joubert, who continually careered between triumph and disgrace, cut his exhibition teeth with the Sydney agricultural shows and moved on to international exhibitions in the mid seventies. After disgrace with the 1879 Sydney exhibition he became a travelling gun for hire, organising exhibitions in Perth, Calcutta, Melbourne, New Zealand and Tasmania - this one and the 1894 Hobart exhibition.
I learnt from the back cover that Collard & Collard offered pianos, upright and grand, in Tasmanian woods of elegant finish and I wonder whether any made their way back among the rosewoods and mahoganies. In any case, few experts think that Collard pianos are worth restoring except for sentimental purposes so it probably doesn't matter.

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Exhibition - Launceston 1891. Official Record of the Tasmanian International Exhibition - held at Launceston, 1891-92. Printed at the Launceston Examiner Office 1893. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth (a bit marked); viii,137pp, frontispiece. Quite a good copy with John Chapman's bookplate. Au$900

This includes a list of the award winners.

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PUTTICK, A.A. [Athol Alfred?]. Television. A simple story which provides a peep into the treasure trove of Television. [cover title: Television Without Tears]. Melbourne, Ruskin Press [1943?]. 15x10cm publisher's plain light card wrapper and illustrated dustwrapper; 69pp, frontispiece and illustrations throughout. Minor signs of use, rather good. Au$900

This scarce, perhaps even rare, little book is the first Australian book on television. J.A. Kline's preface notes that war had put a hold on the development of television in Australia - by 'put a hold' we mean nothing had been done - and Puttick canvases the financial problems faced by a small population in a large country.
An optimistic, perhaps foolishly optimistic, book to put out in the middle of the war, presumably it was ignored and Puttick never returned to it. I can't find that he published anything else but I came across a reference to an A.A. Puttick playing a part in aircraft design in the mid fifties. He worked in technical education and died in 1965.

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Catalogue - film typography. Orion-Filmfabriek. Letterproef. The Hague, Orion-Filmfabriek [1926?]. 13x16cm publisher's illustrated boards, string bound; title and prefatory leaves, 52 sample leaves all printed on rectos on light card leaves. Some printed in two colours, one a mounted collage of a telegram and one with six inset celluloid filmstrip sections of examples in six colours. String looks like a later replacement, some spotting first and last couple of leaves. Rather good. sold

Typefaces, borders (on 16 numbered leaves), decorations and miscellanea, all for cinema; something I've never seen before.
The film company Orion-Filmfabriek was established in 1925. Now best known for news reels they produced advertising, corporate films and, as we see here, announcements, prologue and end titles and anything else a film company or cinema might want. Two examples - for the Dutch releases of 'He Who Gets Slapped' (1924) and Salammbo (1925) - and notice of their own Orion-Revue 52 suggest a date of not much later than July 1926.

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Catalogue - printing & stationery. Waterlow Brothers & Layton. Waterlow Bros. & Layton ... Catalogue of General Stationery. London, Waterlow 1912. Quarto publisher's cloth (marked); xvi,288p, profusely illustrated throughout and a number of inserted plates and specimens of embossing, seals, share certificates, cheques, visiting cards, a double page colour plate of bindings and so on. sold

The renegade - as much as such a thoroughly respectable company can be renegade - side of the Waterlow empire was a result of a family schism in 1877 which continued for forty years until all were united under the Waterlow & Sons banner again. This catalogue is more slender than the most splendid of the senior branch that appeared in the decade before the first world war but the difference is quantity rather than quality.

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Catalogues - printing types. A bundle of 20th century Dutch type catalogues and sample books. vp [c1916-1970]. 13 volumes octavo and quarto publishers' cloth, boards or wrappers. sold

I had to buy these to get something else and I'm too lazy and impatient to catalogue them separately so I'm hoping to recover postage. It's a useful representative gathering of a half century of Dutch printing and typography as the industry went from hand to machine setting to photolithography. The Netherlands was the centre of European printing for centuries and considering the population I'd guess that half the country was in the printing business.
The box of cards c1970 which is the most recent and maybe the most interesting item is complete - as is everything else I think.

*The stack in the last photo is roughly chronological, old to new going up.

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Sumida Fireworks. Fireworks. Tokyo-To Tourist Assn. [1948]. 18x11cm publisher's colour woodcut card wrapper, cord tied; 12pp with a few illustrations, eight pages of illustrated adverts and two mounted colour woodcuts (miniature Hiroshiges). Au$60

Quite cute, issued for the 1948 Sumida fireworks contest on September 18 including a complete list of the 278 fireworks to be launched; the first 122 are daytime fireworks. According to received history this event didn't happen. Most accounts tell us the festival stopped before the war and didn't start again until 1978 but a first hand account by the daughter of an organiser says that fireworks were set off on August 1st and the festival continued until the early sixties when the river was deemed too polluted and foul. By the late seventies the river had been revived and the contest resumed in 1978.
August 1st was apparently the day the national ban on fireworks was lifted which may be the reason for that date. So did the contest happen in September?

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Kurofune Kawaraban. Perry and the Black Ships. アメリカ蒸気船之図 ... 豆州 ... 海陸御固御役人附 [Amerika Jokisen no Zu ... Izu ... Kairiku o Kata o Yakunin Fu]. n.p. [1854]. Woodcut 60x32cm on two sheets; folded. sold

A most handsome portrait of Perry's steamship by an artist in no way hampered by being at some remove from the subject.
Kawaraban - illicit illustrated news sheets for the streets - were produced by the million for a couple of hundred years so of course few survive. They were produced for anything more interesting than the drop of a hat and the arrival of the Black Ships, the American squadron commanded by Perry, in 1853 and 54 eclipsed any and all tiresome earthquakes, fires, plagues, famines, murders and scandals. For most Japanese this was the same as a squadron of alien space ships arriving on earth now. These prints are the kurofune (black ship) kawaraban.
Attached is the list of officials manning the defences.

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Kawaraban. 泰平鑑 : オロシャ国船之図 [Miyo Taihei Kagami : Orosha Koku Fune no Zu]. n.p. 1854? (Kaei 7). Woodcut 37x49cm. Folded, a bit rumpled; pretty good. sold

News of a Russian ship off Tempozan in Osaka Bay in September 1854, and the reassuring defence on the headland. This was Putyatin's squadron - chasing the agreement that Perry had snaffled - that sailed into Osaka and were promptly shuffled off to Shimoda. I don't know if this is meant to be the new flagship, Diana, which had a short life: it was a victim of the great Ansei earthquakes, sunk at Shimoda. Japanese carpenters built them a new ship from the wreckage.

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Mother Shipton in Japan

End of the world. 世界の転覆という妄説 [Sekai no Tenpuku to Iu Bosetsu]. Osaka, Kato Tomisaburo September 1881 (Meiji 14). Woodcut 52x35cm, folded. Sometime mounted with remnants of mounting paper on the back. sold

Mother Shipton in Japan and the end of world over 15 days. Word somehow spread, at the time of a series of natural disasters, that some 15th century westerner had prophesised the end of the world in 1881 and it looked very much like it was happening. I can't find any indication that Mother Shipton has been identified in Japan but she must be our culprit. Or rather, since Mother Shipton's prophecies only began appearing a century or so after her death, supposing that she did exist, in this case the blame lies with Charles Hindley, hack antiquarian and bibliographer, who published an authentic version of her prophecies in 1862 which included the 1881 prophecy and, in 1873, confessed that he made it up.
A chilling sort of butterfly effect, in that an amusing jape in Brighton, England ends up apparently causing despair and suicides in Japan twenty years later. The only mention of this print I can find is in a 2010 NDL newsletter with an article and small display of some of the publications of this great delusion. The writer tells us that the first appearance was a sheet printed in Osaka followed by a couple in Kyoto and from there on to Tokyo. The Osaka sheet was listed as unseen in 2010 and may well still be until now.
What is curious is that this and subsequent prints are labelled a 'delusion' of the end of the world but this did not stop despair and it certainly didn't affect the sales of all these prints. The NDL quotes from a 1925 interview with someone who remembered the fuss and spoke of crowds in the print shops every day and the rising number of suicides. I gather the authorities lost patience and cracked down pretty quick. Naturally all those books and prints have pretty much vanished.
Now, this may not meet the strict definition of a kawaraban - illicit sheets issued anonymously - but I think that's nitpicking. In spirit this is a kawaraban: the latest news, more importantly the latest bad news, cheaply printed for the common folk and it made the authorities unhappy.

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Takeda Hisa. 最新魔術双六 [Saishin Majutsu Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shonen Sekai 1922 (Taisho 11). 55x80cm colour broadside. Some small holes in folds; with the playing pieces intact in the margin.
Plus the new year issue of Shonen Sekai that this game came with (spine separating but all there and decent enough). Au$300

This game of the latest in magic was the new year gift for 1922 readers.

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Catalogue - tiles. Australian Tesselated Tile Co. Designs for Encaustic and Geometrical Tile Pavements (cover title). Mitcham (printed by Sands & McDougall, Melbourne) 1896. Folio (31x25cm) publisher's cloth backed printed wrappers (silverfished); [2]pp and 16 chromolithograph plates - 63 numbered pavement designs on 13 plates, 16 glazed hearths on two, and a number of finials and ridgings on the last plate. The silverfish have done little to the front wrapper but they have attacked the back, chomping into the last four plates, only of moment in the margins of the last plate and insignificant by the fourth last.
Inserted is a handwritten price list, October 1900, for Silvanus Wilmot of Launceston - presumably the sculptor. Au$4000

Unrecorded anywhere I can think of to look. The only other catalogue from the company that I know of is one from about 1914 - now in the HHT library - which was made up from different sources. They also own a catalogue also about the same date from Cartlidge's The Australian Roman Mosaics Tile Works and that's about it for early Australian tile makers. Michael Lech, in an article on the Cartlidge catalogue (Australiana, May 2008), tells us that the City of Stonnington Archives has a photocopy of an 1880s catalogue from Henry Cawkwell's Australian Mosaic Tile Works - predecessor of both the Tesselated and the Roman Mosaic Tile companies - which suggests that an original might exist. Anyone know?
As a piece of colonial colour printing it is as good as anything similar coming from England and Europe.

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LENTZNER, Karl. Colonial English: A Glossary of Australian, Anglo-Indian, Pidgin English, West Indian, and South African Words. (Worterbuch der Englischen Volkssprache Australiens). Halle-Leipzig, Karras & London, Kegan Paul 1891. Largish octavo publisher's printed card wrapper; [18],237,[2]pp. Wrappers a bit browned and used, inside an excellent unopened copy.
Titled in German on the wrapper and first title page; following this is the English title page, and the rest is all in English. Au$750

Hard to find and quite fabulous. This is the first dictionary of colonial Australian, with slang, words introduced from aboriginal languages and from pidgin. Lentzner seems to have spent some years in New South Wales in the 1870's. He claimed to have taught languages at Sydney Grammar and Kings School and mentions coming across 'Yokohama-Pidgin' as spoken by Japanese naval officers in Sydney in 1877, which gives the Australian portions some claim to originality and importance; for the rest he relies heavily on other authorities.
The claim to originality and importance may be arguable and the use of other authorities questionable - as The Bulletin, in a scathing notice of January 30, 1892, wrote: "published at the end of last year ... [and] almost instantly withdrawn. The latter step was the proper one ... as the material, badly compiled at best, violated several copyrights." They went on: "The very faults of the work, however, will give it value in collectors' eyes, and those fortunate enough to get hold of one of the few copies which reached Australia may now be interested to know that the book is already selling at fancy prices."
Whether, or however, the difficulties of copyright were resolved the same sheets were re-issued with a cancel title page and a new title, 'Dictionary of the Slang-English of Australia', dated 1892. Copies with either title seem equally hard to come by.

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Pesticide manga. フマキラーマンガ [Fumakilla Manga]. Fumakilla [192-?]. 10x7cm folding out to 8 panels: ie 16pp printed in red and blue. Au$100

Tiny maybe but when did you last have so much fun squirting bug killer over your family, pets, livestock and plants? Fumakilla was patented in 1924 and Fumakilla, the company, still exists but I suppose the delivery method is obsolete.

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Heidosai Shujin & Ryuu Joshi. 世界一覧 [Sekai Ichiran]. Tokyo, Izumiya Ichibee 1872 [Meiji 5]. Two volumes 235x155mm, publisher's wrappers with title labels; 48;52pp on double folded leaves and a double page colour world map, smaller woodcut maps and illustrations throughout. Some worming in the first volume, only of note in a few leaves and hardly terminal; pretty good. Au$800

A beguiling book, both as a digest of the world and as an essay in digesting exotic western typefaces and scripts; in digesting all things western really, from language to image. By 1872 Japan had plenty of pictures of the outside world to study and while the maps seem pretty accurate the views are still like imaginings worked up from descriptions. The pyramids seem to be in a jungle - perhaps the artist couldn't imagine desert and thought his model incomplete - London has become Venice on the Thames and poor Paris, without an Eiffel Tower to centre on, is just a railway works yard.
Worldcat finds only the National Diet Library entry.

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Takeda Korai. 倭洋妾横濱美談 [Yamato Rasha Yokohama Bidan]. Tokyo? Kinjudo 1881 (Meiji 14). Three volumes 18x12cm, publisher's colour woodblock wrappers; 18 pages in each volume, illustrated by Chikanobu throughout with three frontispieces, a single page and a double page plate in colour in the first volume. Understandable thumbing but rather good with a laid down, chewed but mostly complete colour woodcut outer wrapper (fukuro). Au$1350

Slight maybe but there's a novel, or a play at least, just in those front covers. Yamato Rasha is, I'm told, a soap of women's lives with western men in Yokohama. Even I can tell, from the pictures, that they were lives filled with conflict, devious schemes, jealousy, violence by footwear ... busy indeed.
There is a modern reprint but I find only one entry in worldcat for the original outside Japan.

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Fukutani Masakichi. 新撰裁縫の栞 [Shinsen Saiho no Shiori]. Osaka, Kashiwabara 1915 (Taisho 4). Three volumes 15x22cm, publisher's colour woodblock chirimen (crepe) wrappers on one and three, plain wrapper with title label on two; publisher's pattern board case with title label (surface nibbled, missing one clasp); double page colour woodcut frontispiece, b/w illustrations and two folding patterns in the first volume, b/w illustrations throughout the third volume, and 24 folding patterns in the middle volume - a mix of cutting and decoration patterns. Some misfolding of patterns, signs of use but careful use. Au$200

A smart set of home kimono making books and obviously very successful: first published in 1903, this is called the 25th edition and I think there were at least a couple more. So of course these remain virtually unknown, ignored and complete sets are not so easy to find. The NDL entry is the only one I can find in any library around the world.

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Educational fan leaf. 地球略説 ... 地球五帯之図 ... [Chikyu Ryakusetsu ... Chikyu Gotai No Zu ...]. n.p. n.d. [187-?]. Engraved fan leaf 26x51cm overall. Pleated but obviously never used. sold

An education at your finger tips, with the twin hemisphere map of the world, the important flags, Roman numerals so as to read a clock, what I take to be distances, and vignettes of a steam ship and a steam train. Most everything you need to know about the modern world.
I have seen a contemporary album with a dozen fan leaves like this that includes this one - it was the representative illustration so it must be the pick of the bunch. Apparently the collector gave some details of who printed them and when, and they all date from the 1870s.

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Magic. Kitensai Shoichi 各国発明 : ふしぎのでん [Kakkoku Hatsumei : Fushigi No Den]. n.p. n.d. [c1880?]. 17x11cm publisher's colour woodcut wrappers, thread tied; 7 folded leaves including wrappers, b/w illustrations on eleven pages. Well thumbed but most acceptable. Au$900

Deservedly thumbed, an appealing little book of mostly western magic tricks that does not teach you, I'm sorry, how to drive a spike through your tongue. Kitensai supposedly learnt western magic in Paris in the early 1870s and brought it back to Japan in the mid to late 1870s; I can't find two writers that agree on dates.
The NDL has copies of another work on western conjuring tricks that appeared in the 1880's with Kitensai listed as first contributor to the earliest, 1882, printing but I can't find a record of our book anywhere. I suspect it was produced for sale at his shows.
The back wrapper might be purposeful or might have been pinched from a popular kabuki thriller about the battle between good and evil being printed across the workshop.

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Nakamura Fusetsu, Takahama Kyoshi, Kawahigashi Hekigodo & Natsume Soseki. 不折俳画 [Fusetsu Haiga]. Tokyo, Kokado 1910 (Meiji 43). Two volumes 30x17cm publisher's cloth* wrappers, title labels (the first a touch nibbled); 20 colour woodcuts by Fusetsu in each volume plus woodcut titles and another colour print in the second; Natsume Soseki's preface printed as a manuscript in umber. In a cloth case missing its clasps, title label stamped with five red seals including what looks to be Fusetsu's and at least one of the other contributor's own seals (that on the title of the second volume - is it one of Soseki's innumerable seals?). A remarkably bright copy of a book prone to foxing. Au$800

Is this a large paper or deluxe copy? The first thing that struck me when these arrived was how tall they are and I can't find a record of any other copy much less than an inch shorter (and thinner when a clear enough picture is available). Or is it just that copies measured and catalogued as first editions aren't? This copy does not have and never had the publisher's announcements and colophon at the end of each volume like the copy reproduced by the NDL.
Haiga - the mix of picture and haiku - is by 1910 very old school and Fusetsu's drawings have a direct lineage to Buson. But Fusetsu was a star of the generation that studied western painting and went on to forge a new style of Japanese painting which, given ink and paper and freed from the weight of oil, canvas and the academy, breathed life back into Japanese drawing with the same sharp eye but more affection than their European contemporaries, making the best of those draughtsmen look a bit mean and studied.
*Neither can I find another copy bound with what looks like a loose weave muslin.

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Sugiyama Tojiro. 文明之花 [Bunmei no Hana] A Fine Story of Womans Right - the Flower of Civilization. Tokyo, Kin'odo 1887 (Meiji 20). Octavo (19x13cm) publisher's colour illustrated boards and cloth spine; two single page and four double page illustrations. Signs of use, expected browning of the paper, a very good copy of a most vulnerable book. Au$1000

First edition of this remarkable utopian novel of women's rights in which a couple work towards and see the establishment of two equal parliaments, one for women and one for men. This was written in the period of anticipation of Japan's first parliament, scheduled for 1890. Radical as Sugiyama was, there is a sting in the tail for current feminists: Sugiyama is clear that women should be equal to men in all things right up until they get married. Equality for men and women does not mean equality for husband and wife.
Sugiyama published a rush of novels and political writing in the late seventies and eighties. These days he has been exhumed and is kept busy being rediscovered as a science fiction writer.
I discover with this copy that two completely different covers exist: one, prettified, with a mock cabinet photo of a young woman against a floral background and this one, a solid western building in a modern city street. To capture the serious male reader who would not pick up what might be a romance for women?
This is a 'ball cover' (boru hyoshi) book - a signal of modernity and the Japanese equivalent of a yellowback: flimsy western style bindings with lithograph covers that rarely survive in such good shape. Worldcat finds two locations for this, the National Diet Library and Berkeley, but I know the National Library of Australia has a copy.

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First word of the bomb

Takeo Takei. 原子爆彈 [Genshi Bakudan (ie: Atomic Bomb)]. Tokyo, Domei Tsushinsha September 1945. Octavo printed wrapper; 32pp including wrapper, untrimmed and loose (apparently as issued). Rather browned and a bit frayed round the edges. Au$750

Published as Domei Sosho No.1 by Domei - the national news agency - on 20th September 1945, apparently the day before the US occupation censorship had time to be fully implemented.* Domei Sosho no.2 was on the Potsdam declaration and there, I think, the series ended. I have read that 200,000 copies of this were printed. Worldcat locates one copy outside Japan - in Australia - and it doesn't appear in the catalogue of the Prange collection - the world's largest collection of occupation era documents, collected by the official historian to the occupation.
There is still nothing much to be found in English on Takeo or his pamphlet. As I can best figure, the story is that Takeo was a scientific and/or political correspondent for Domei and spoke English. He and a colleague listened in to allied broadcasts, translated Truman's statement on the bombing of Hiroshima and were the first to tell the Japanese government that the "new bomb" was an atomic bomb. Takeo's widow and son published a memorial book in 1995 with background and contemporary papers which doesn't seem to have worked its way to writers in English. From my stumbling through a review of that book I get the impression that Takeo was seen as an apologist for the US and their use of the bomb which was unfair. He was attempting to give as objectively as possible as much information as he could and what information he had came only from what could he could scrape together from radio broadcasts. How much of this view of him was long after the fact I don't know. He had been or became - I'm not clear on this - a communist journalist which can't have endeared him to any authorities.
There is a modern facsimile of this which may or may not be related to the book published by Mrs Takeo - it seems likely. That should not be mistaken for this. Neither should Takeo Takei the journalist be confused with Takeo Takei the illustrator.

*Nuclear physicist Sagane Ryokichi's 'Genshi Bakudan' published in October had two sections removed by the censor from every copy.

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PAIN, Barry. Playthings and Parodies. London, Cassell 1892. Octavo publisher's blindstamped green cloth. A quite good copy. Au$60

First edition. Not unamusing, some parodies including Kipling, Ruskin and Tolstoi and a number of short pieces.

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Paper. Uemura Rokuro & Yoshida Keisuke 越中産紙手鑑 [Etchusanshishukan]. Washi Kenkyukai 1954. 30x22cm publisher's wrappers and folding cloth case; 45pp, three folding maps and two plates on various papers and 56 paper samples of various sizes. 250 copies were produced and were not for sale. An excellent copy. Au$200

Etchu washi are handmade papers that have been made in the Toyama region for quite a few hundred years.

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RASHDALL, Hastings. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. A new edition in three volumes edited by F.M. Powicke and A.B. Emden. Oxford Univ Press 1958 [1936]. Three volumes octavo, very good in publisher's cloth and browned dustwrappers; two plates and a map. Au$150

A reprint of the revised edition (1936), and still the standard work.

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Catalogue - Pharmaceuticals. Weeks & Potter, Boston. Revised Catalogue of Foreign and Domestic Drugs, selected powders, fine essential oils, waters and extracts ... wines and liquors, proprietry medicines, druggists shop furniture ... sundries and surgical appliances, sponges, fancy goods, and toilet articles. Boston 1890. Octavo publisher's limp cloth, the front titled in black (spine browned and a bit rubbed); 468,130pp, profusely illustrated with wood engravings and a handsome full page colour lithograph of a bottle of their Beef, Iron and Wine. Used but solid and very decent. The second section consists of advertisements. Au$300

The advertisements include a warning by Dr S.A. Richmond of Tuscola, Illinois, against fraudulent companies selling bogus versions of his justly celebrated Samaritan Nervine. He prints the text of a judgment against such a company and invites the many thousands of those he has saved from epilepsy, insanity and death to join him "lashing these ignorant, impotent, piratical scoundrels through the earth with a whip of scorpions."

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HADDON, A.C. & James HORNELL. Canoes of Oceania. Honolulu, Bishop Museum 1936-37-38. Three volumes large octavo publisher's printed wrappers; numerous photo illustrations and line drawings throughout. An excellent set. Au$1750

Hard to find complete in such good shape, this is the definitive work. I: The Canoes of Polynesia, Fiji, and Micronesia by Hornell; II: The canoes of Melanesia, Queensland by Haddon; III: Definition of Terms, General Survey, and Conclusions by both.

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HANDS, Joseph. Beauty, and the Laws Governing its Development; with suggestions on education, relative to the attainment of beauty. London, E.W. Allen [1882?] with overlaid ticket of the Chicago National Institute of Science. Slender octavo, publisher's decorated red cloth blocked in black and gilt; 88pp. A couple of minor flaws to the cloth, rather good. Au$300

Only edition and elusive; just like describing Hands' writings in a simple and clear way. Hands was a London physician cum homeopath, apparently still respectable - viz his membership of the Royal College of Surgeons presuming his claim is true - and wrote works best, or most easily, described as thoroughly Victorian lunatic fringe: on will-ability and mind-energy, on the laws of matter and motion, and here, on aesthetics.
Hands begins with seven aphorisms, one of which was Hogarth's, all sensible enough; the last is quite noble. But from there he leaps from the ideal human form (5'10" tall for man; 5'6'' for woman) to electro-polar action to colour to the lapse of time like an ibex in the high alps and following him leaves us breathless and bewildered.

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穀相場早見 [Koku Soba Hayami?]. n.p. n.d. [mid 19th century?]. Woodcut 17x23 cm printed in black with volvelle printed in blue attached by a paper twist. Nibble from the bottom edge, pretty damn good. Au$150

A cute if vulnerable ready reckoner for the poorest classes dealing with grain that has somehow survived intact. I guess that you choose a quantity from the outer edge - with numbers from 50 to100 - and the two inner cutouts show you the answers - whatever that is. I have found a couple of uninformative references which only tell us that it is late Edo - ie before 1867.

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