Roosevelt. A Japanese painted wood peg for hoops or quoits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. [Japan 1930s?]. 28cm high, circular base 13cm diameter. Hat chipped on one side, a few small paint chips. His head turns. Au$350

Whoever painted this, the face at least, was pretty good with a brush. Getting a hoop over him demands that Roosevelt has to be slim but I've decided this is pre-war simply because I don't think Roosevelt would have so kindly treated and allowed into a fun game once war started.


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Banking. 株式会社島原貯金銀行 : 支店開業広告 [Kabushikigaisha Shimabara Chokinginko : Shiten Kaigyo Kokoku]. n.p. [c1898] Colour lithograph 26x39cm. A nice copy. Au$300

This gentle, charming advertisement - hikifuda - announcing branch openings of the Shimabara Savings Bank is illustrated by two reassuring stories of rags to riches - or solid comfort at least. The Shimabara Bank was founded in 1891 and the Shimabara Savings Bank in 1897 but didn't live long thanks to some investment decisions by the Nakayama family - three Nakayamas including president Fumiko are listed among the directors.
Shimabara is in the Nagasaki prefecture and the two branches advertised are Arie - a town that was engulfed by Minamitakaki City - and Taira - which I can only trace as a railway station in a desolate looking area of Unzen, Nagasaki. Dates for month and day have been left blank.


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WEALE, John [ed]. Ensamples of Railway Making; which, although not of English practice, are submitted, with practical illustrations, to the civil engineer and the British and Irish public. London, Architectural Library 1843. Octavo blindstamped cloth (a little worn at the tips); viii,xlii,64,xvi,101pp, litho frontispiece, two maps, 24 folding plates, two folding tables, one engraving in the text. A little misfolding and some browning and spotting but quite a good copy. Au$400

R.F. Isherwood supplies an extensive report on the Utica and Syracuse Railroad and E. Dobson likewise reports on the railways of Belgium. Railway building in England in the early 1840s was in poor shape and worse repute - depression and irrecoverable costs of construction being the main problems. The Utica and Syracuse railway is a salutary example of practical and economical building - it was built at a cost of £3,600 per mile whereas the average English railway cost £30,000 per mile. Some of the savings came from a patent excavator which is described and illustrated; more crucial was the use of timber bridges and much of this (and most of the plates) is devoted to various forms of these.
Railways in Ireland did not yet exist and Weale saw their necessity as almost a moral imperative: 'it is no less .. than the duty of the gentry, mercantile and trading classes, to encourage a full development of her energies .. as the best means of securing to that portion of the empire a share of advantages to which they are justly entitled, but which they have never yet enjoyed'.


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Fireworks. 花火新伝事法 [Hanabi Shin Den Jiho]. n.p. [1865] (Keio 1). Manuscript in ink, 24x15cm cloth covered boards lettered by hand; 20 double page spreads 20x24cm mounted on card and framed with grey paper. Front margin wormed spreading into the top margin but barely into the framed sheets; last few leaves chomped in the gutter. None of this is as fatal as it sounds. On the back cover is another inscription dated 1886 (Meiji 19). Au$500

A very cool pyrotechnist's working book, even with the chewing, unlike anything else I've seen. Someone put in a fair bit of work to make a working book into an album. The title can be translated as New Methods of Fireworks. There are almost no published manuals of Japanese fireworks before the 20th century. Risho published a small book in 1825 and that is properly rare. Such information was occult knowledge, circulated in manuscript and passed from master to apprentice. I can't claim expertise but having seen a few 18th and 19th century fireworks manuscripts I am yet to see a second copy of any. It makes sense that every maker had their own method and styles and most every manuscript was peculiar to that.


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Fireworks 星山流相圖書夜之業 [Hoshiyama-ryu aizusho yanogo?]. n.p. 1837 (Tenpo 8) Manuscript 23x16cm plain wrapper, 12 double leaves (ie 24 pages) plus five unbound double leaves and a single sheet with a carefully measured diagram; illustrations through the rest. Dated Tenpo 8 on what must be the last loose leaf with a red seal that I can't decipher. Au$250

Rocketry as weapon rather than fun, though firing off a rocket always has some element of fun. The loose leaves are clearly a continuation of the bound work - the first leaf has a repeat of most the title and we finish with a kind of colophon - but despite a few red numbers I can't swear they are complete.


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BAKER, Richard.T. Cabinet Timbers of Australia. Sydney, Techn. Museum 1913. Oblong quarto publisher's cloth; 186pp. 68 colour plates, hundreds of photo illustrations. One corner a bit bumped but a rather good copy. Au$450

Still the bible of Australian timbers - it supplies colour plates of timber grains, properties and uses, illustrated by examples of cabinet work and interiors.


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YOUNG, Rev. W. Report on the Condition of the Chinese Population in Victoria. Melbourne, Govt Printer 1868. Foolscap folio, stitched as issued; 30pp. Au$850

By 1868 the Chinese population of Victoria was on the wane - estimated at less than half of its peak at the height of the goldrush - but "vicious practices"were seemingly on the rise. Chief among these were, of course, gambling and opium but their by-products, larceny and robberies, were a growing threat. Young suggested that the decline or disbandment of Chinese Associations had a directly negative effect on crime and has provided a translation of the rules of an association to illustrate to the government the benefit of these associations to the community.
The first part of his report is both valuable and touching in that Chinese translators have provided statistics for each of the areas with Chinese communities; these statistics then are personal and idiosyncratic in their focus, providing the closest thing we have to a Chinese view of themselves at the time. Young includes a report by Dr Clendenning on the condition of Chinese lepers at Ballarat, and then finishes with his own report and suggestions for improvements, including the restitution of 'Headmen', the improvement of interpreters, education in English, Chinese police officers and so on. However, given the "abnormal condition of the great mass" (ie no women), in present circumstances it was best to encourage them to all go home.
Young was an LMS missionary to the Chinese, apparently of Scottish-Malay descent, who had served in Amoy before coming to Victoria in the mid fifties. The impression given by this report and other documents of the period is that he was one of very few non-Chinese in the colony that had any grasp of any Chinese language.


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ALDEN, Winthrop. The Lost Million. New York, Dodd Mead 1913. Octavo publisher's green cloth with onlaid colour illustration. A couple of minute flaws to the onlay but an excellent, bright copy. Au$175

First edition. An obscure, uncommon and ripe thriller with mysterious adventurers - male and female, mysterious charges, mysterious threats, exotic strangers, and mysterious, exotic, threatening strangers, all surrounding an ancient Egyptian bronze cylinder which contains a deadly secret. Hubin denotes Winthrop Alden to be the pseudonym of a distinguished author but can't help more. Winthrop Alden was a character in Henry van Dyke's 'The Ruling Passion' (1901) but there are real people with the name.


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GUNN, Dr David. [James Reid?] The Story of Lafsu Beg, the Camel Driver. As told to ... showing how he went to Australia, and what befel him there. Sydney &c, Geo. Robertson [1896]. Narrow octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper. Spine ends and corners chipped, a used but more than acceptable copy. No.2 of the Warrigal Series. Au$1250

Only edition of this rare novel which is, in it's own way, as lonely as a solo camel driver lost in the desert. A small book on Islam and camel drivers in Australia joined this in 1932 and then there is another empty expanse until modern histories and academic papers began to appear. All of these cite Lafsu Beg but I only found one that indicated that the writer had read it and no-one commented on how remarkable it's sympathetic treatment of Muslims was at a time of ferocious xenophobia and racism, even by Australian standards. Don't forget that "Australia for the white man" was on The Bulletin masthead until the 1960s.
David Gunn is as elusive as Lafsu Beg. He enters the records with this book and exits with a very short tale in the Sydney Mail in 1899. Morris Miller made it clear that Gunn was as fictional as Beg - the name is in quotes - and Nesbitt and Hadfield (Australian Literary Pseudonyms) give us the name James Reid with birthdate 1836. There my trail ran cold; I won't drag you down the dead ends.
This may not be the best copy but as it's the only copy in the wild I've seen I didn't wait for one better.


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[William Harvey (or Harvie?) Christie]. A Love Story. By a Bushman. Sydney, G.W. Evans 1841. Octavo, two volumes bound together in contemporary half calf (front cover detached and most of the spine gone). An old repair to the title page, a bit foxed but pretty good; one leaf was creased while printing, not significant.
The author's daughter's copy but presented not by him but her husband, Charles Kemp of Kemp and Fairfax, printers of the book. It is inscribed "Stella Kemp, 1841. C.K." Au$4000

Only edition of this Sydney fiction incunabulum. The Australasian Chronicle (August 7 1841) gave this a lot of space, mostly due to the duty to "encourage the first blossoms of Australian literaure" and pads it out with lengthy quotes. The reviewer strives for kindness but in the end we're left with the notion that he was most impressed by an elegant two volume novel (price one guinea) being produced in Sydney. The Sydney Herald of the same date is equally generous with space padded by quotes, more generous about the author's ability, given a thoughtfully judicious approach. The reviewer protests a bit much that they know nothing about the author's identity; perhaps necessary as Kemp may well have written the review.
First into print were The Australian and The Sydney Gazette (both August 5) each with a one paragraph notice of the book in which more words praise the book's production than the writing. I didn't find a review in either paper.
The Port Phillip Gazette (October 2) is way less encouraging about the author's abilities but still devotes three quarters of a page, thanks to padding, to the book. At the end we learn that what is reviewed is volume one and I realised that none of the reviews suggest that volume two was opened and that no-one remarks on the Australian episodes. Nor does any reviewer mention the existence of another Australian novel - despite the notice in the Chronicle the day before their review telling us that this was the second novel from the Australian press and both were by the same author. The dutiful Port Phillip Gazeete did return with volume two (October 2) but it's hard to tell whether anyone but the typesetter read much of the book.
A writer to The Temperance Advocate (September 15 1841) wrote rapturously about the book but he hadn't read it and was under the impression that it was the first ever Australian novel. Forgivable, since the Advocate had said so on August 11. Word, at least, of the book had reached Hobart by the end of August but I found no review. I would have guessed that Hobart patriots rushed to refute Sydney's claim to the first novel. Not so.
Christie was a card carrying member of the when-in-doubt-kill-someone school. No-one has a good time from what I can see. H.M. Green condemned this as "rubbish" in passing, so passing that it wasn't worth indexing. You can find it on p280 of his History of Australian Literature. Green was furious about the amount of space given to our Love Story by Barton in his Literature in New South Wales (1866) but that may have more to do with it being Barton's first fiction entry and that he had read it. It's not a kind review.
This is maybe the only copy I've traced that wasn't a gift to someone valuable to his career.


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TEALE, T. Pridgin, Dangers to Health: a pictorial guide to domestic sanitary defects. London, Churchill &c 1879. Octavo publisher's gilt decorated illustrated cloth (a touch mottled); 55 plates, all but a couple in black and blue, one in three colours. Minor signs of use, quite good. Au$475

First edition of this charming and terrifying pictorial guide to the perils of Victorian home life. Three more editions and French, German and Spanish translations (at least) followed over the next few years. I recommend this to anyone wanting to restore old houses with absolute authenticity. And it's essential for time travellers.
"Having further traced illness amongst my own patients to scandalous carelessness and gross dishonesty ... I became indignantly alive to the fact that very few houses are safe to live in." A still useful warning. Teale, third generation Leeds surgeon, like so many eminent Victorians, can only have achieved so much by working hundred and sixty hour weeks. There was a deluge of obituaries at his death in 1923, all eulogistic, but the note in the British Medical Journal caught my eye: he had an "almost feminine sweetness of disposition."


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WORCESTER, G.R.G. [George Raleigh Gray]. The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze. A study in Chinese nautical research. Shanghai, Dept of Customs 1947-48. Two volumes quarto publisher's green cloth (different grained cloth on each volume); numerous photo illustrations, measured drawings & plans, several folding.  A nice, bright pair. Au$1600

Worcester was by no means the only civil servant in China, or any exotic foreign spot, to devote large slabs of their life to collecting, collating and preserving disappearing arts, crafts, languages and customs, but his books on junks and sampans are remarkable for being exhaustive and well timed. They are references that can never be obsolete, recording as they do dozens of now vanished vessel types - their design, construction, peculiar use and all manner of social and personal history of their owners and crews.


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