Shop signs. 新看板図案工作集 [Shin Kanban Zuan Kosakushu]. Tokyo, Seibundo Shinkosha 1938 (Showa 13). 26x19cm publisher's cloth (small chip from the spine) and printed card slipcase; 194pp, numerous b/w line drawings and photo illustrations, 17 colour and another eight plates printed in green. Au$400

Second printing or issue? This appeared the year before as a special number of the journal Kokoku Kai - advertising world. A collection of new advertising and shop signs which is both a treasury of existing signs - most Japanese with a selection from Europe - and offers design suggestions and practical tips. There's a few I want, the giant ear with a phonograph implant high on the list.
Worldcat finds no copies.

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Kurofune Kawaraban. Perry and the Black Ships in Japan. 日本力士名前 [Nihon Rikishi Namae]. n.p. [1854]. woodcut 305x230mm. Folded; stitch holes in the margins indicate it was bound at some time. A bit rumpled, pretty good. sold

A graceful, balletic group portrait of five of the sumo wrestlers who loaded the gift of rice to Perry's squadron. I have seen a smaller version of this in which three wrestlers (rikishi) also pirouette and juggle the straw barrels while an American sailor collapses under the weight. The text lists the names of twenty of the rikishi.
Accompanying this is a woodcut that was clearly bound with the picture: it seems to be a list of 50 names but I can't tell what they signify.

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Hikifuda. 六神丸 アプト - 富山製剤株式会社 [Rokujinmaru aputo - Toyama Seizai Kabushikigaisha]. Toyama Pharmaceutical [191-?]. Three lithographs 39x18cm each. Au$300

A trio of carols to modernity, the future and whatever it is that Rokujinmaru - some sort of herbal medicine - does. Presumably it makes children joyous, smart and ready to speed into the future.

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Wada Sanzo. 色名総鑑 [Shikimei Sokan]. Tokyo, Shunjusha 1931 (Showa 6). 20x12cm publisher's cloth case with title label with 160 mounted colour samples on 56 accordian folding card leaves and wrappered book; 178pp and some tables (two folding). The usual offsetting of the card; a nice copy. Colour samples named in Japanese, English and occasionally French or German; two of the tables are multi language lists of colour names. The top edge of the colour cards are gilded and the apparently plain paper lining of the case has a pattern of transparent glazed shapes printed on it. Au$550

First edition of Wada's first serious attempt at colour nomenclature. Wada, though at the top of the art ladder in Japan, insisted on pursuing new directions and founded the Japan Standard Color Association, now the Japan Color Research Institute, in 1927. In these early years science, art and aesthetics went hand in hand.

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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. A small slip was sometime pinned at the bottom of the first two leaves, leaving marks; no great grief. Au$750

By 1868 the Chinese population of Victoria was on the wane - estimated at less than half 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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KAUFFMAN, Reginald Wright. Miss Frances Baird Detective - A Passage From Her Memoirs. Boston, Page 1906. Octavo publisher's illustrated pale blue cloth blocked in ochre, blue and black; colour frontispiece. Minimal signs of use, particularly with such foolishly vulnerable pale cloth, a nice copy. Au$300

First edition of the advent of this professional detective - she reappears in a 1910 novel. Miss Baird is young, good looking, well educated, smart but not infallible - at the start she is under a cloud with her boss for bungling a number of cases. And she works by necessity: she is behind in her rent.
A tangle of murder and twice stolen jewels is unravelled here, with a plot twist that was echoed sixty odd years later by P.D. James in a thriller that also stars a young woman detective scratching to pay her rent.

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MOLLOY, J. Fitzgerald. How Came He Dead? NY, Lovell [1890?]. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth blocked in silver and gilt. Cover a touch marked, stitching a bit loose; quite good. Au$300

First edition, it seems, of a now obscure and rare thriller that may well be among the most widely read novels in late colonial Australia. I don't say it was a best seller - I find no evidence that any copy of this book ever reached Australia - but it was serialised in newspapers in, at least, Brisbane and Gippsland and likely in provincial papers yet to be unearthed. It was also serialised in at least one New Zealand paper and in the US, which is presumably how Lovell got hold hold of it.
This is an English tale of modern villainy populated by London society and ornamented with an Irish dungeon, mysterious Indian poisons and brazen coincidence. In all, satisfying verandah reading from Queensland to Victoria. Other Molloy syndicated serial thrillers did make it to book form in England but I can't discover that there was ever an English edition of this.

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TAUT, Bruno. Houses and People of Japan. London, Gifford 1937. Quarto publisher's coarse cloth and dustwrapper (the spine of the dustwrapper fragmented but essentially complete); [6],xiv,318pp, 535 illustrations, some tipped colour plates. An excellent copy. Au$750

First edition, English issue. It appeared with the Sanseido imprint or this Gifford imprint, though usually we see the Gifford issue dated 1938. The dustwrapper is Sanseido's. An unusually good copy of a book that didn't wear well.

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POUCHET, Georges. The Plurality of the Human Race: translated and edited ... by Hugh J.C. Beavan. Longman, for the Anthropological Society 1864. Octavo publisher's cloth. A nice copy. Au$200

Pouchet did little to advance his father's belated theories of spontaneous generation but his theories of separate species of humanity were perfectly timed. His intention seems less to be to establish racial supremacy - unlike Gobineau and most of the American polygenesists, being French he probably saw no need to press an already ineffaceable advantage - than to cudgel Christianity.
This English translation is invaluable for having been prepared by a horrified Englishman of the upright and conscientious type; the best type. Having been charged with the task Beavan has dutifully prepared it for presentation to the English public despite his raging disapproval: "when Author and Editor differ so considerably ... such very peculiar ideas ... I am sorry to find in it opinions with which I cannot at all agree ... science is strained in an unnatural manner .. entirely unproved ... much to be regretted ... Author and Editor are in entire disagreement ... better left unsaid ..." come from his quite short preface. Still, he has been unable to restrain himself from peppering the book with angry footnotes.

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WEBER, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Being part I of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. London, Hodge 1947. Octavo publisher's cloth. A very good copy. Au$50

First English translation.

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Hamada Masuji and others. 現代商業美術全集 [Gendai Shogyo Bijutsu Zenshu - The Complete Commercial Artist]. Tokyo, Ars 1928-30 (Showa 3 - 5). 24 volumes quarto, publisher's wrappers & printed card slipcases. Thousands of illustrations, most colour. Some flaws and signs of use - spines of the first few volumes a bit ratty, others with chips, wear and tear to the card boxes; a very acceptable set. sold

A complete set of the Shogyo Bijutsu, one of the great monuments of Japanese modernism. Largely the work of Masuji Hamada - credited with the invention of design as a profession in Japan - it is an encyclopaedic gathering of all that is new and exciting in Russia, Europe, Britain and America from art nouveau to bauhaus and constructivism, with futurism, expressionism, dada and everything else along the way lavishly mixed with Japanese responses to, and digestion of, these western ideas. Any number of exciting artists and designers contributed.
Each volume is devoted to a topic or related topics and commercial design here means more than it does to us. So as well as volumes on posters, advertisements, billboards, typography, and similar graphic arts (like bookbindings, magazine, brochure and catalogue covers, packaging, labels, trademarks and placards), there are volumes devoted to the architecture of the shop from the mightiest department store to the most chic Parisian shop window and the display within. Exterior and interior design, showcases and fittings - shops, restaurants, cinemas, even a barber shop or beauty parlour is laid out. One volume is devoted to lighting: neon lights, the lighting of commercial spaces and illuminated signs. Another volume is devoted to kiosks, pavilions and floats, festive decoration, facades, gateways and entrances, while the following volume continues into international exhibitions. Volume 22 is devoted to traditional Japanese shop signs and banners, a treat in itself, while volume 14 explores photography and humour in graphic art - so German photo-montage and French caricature share a volume.

*Click on the picture to see more in the gallery.

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Miniature Japanese notebooks. A set of four miniature blank books with coloured woodcut covers. n.p. (early 20th century?). Four volumes 35x28mm in a slipcase, each traditionally stitched with different patterned woodcut covers and blank title labels. sold

Very cute.

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Textile sample book. 澤印 [cover title] 京染呉服卸商 [Sawa Shirushi - Kyozome Gofuku Oroshisho]. Kyoto, Sawada Shoten [190-?]. 23x16cm publisher's cloth (discoloured) with bone clasp; 100 silk samples in accordian folding heavy printed card mounts.
With another defective sample book with 30 of 32 samples of dyed cottons. Au$225

Finely grained, creped and patterned silks for kimonos. The name Sawada is still connected with kimonos in Kyoto but I can't trace any relationship. The current Sawada Shoten in Kyoto sells work clothes and was founded in 1968.

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Catalogue - furniture. William Smee and Son. Designs of Furniture by William Smee and Son ... London. [binding title: First Supplement to Designs of Furniture]. London, Smee [184-?]. Quarto contemporary (original?) quarter roan and cloth; printed titles used as pastedowns at each end; first leaf (blank or part price list?) removed; two leaves (price list and index); 20 lithograph plates numbered 251-270. Clifford Craig's copy with his card mounted to the stub of the first leaf. sold

The use of Smee's title pages as endpapers at both ends make it almost certain that this is the original binding, as issued. From the index we can see that their first catalogue ran to 250 plates; this added 20 and more were added later. The HHT has a Tasmanian carpenter's copy of an earlyish Smee catalogue - likely in Tasmania by the mid 1850s - that has about two thirds of 374 plates. William Cottrell's thesis on furniture pattern books and catalogues in New Zealand date's Smee's first catalogue (with the title in this supplement) to about 1838 and notes furniture by Sydney makers Lenehan and Joseph Sly directly from the original catalogue. Cottrell goes on to list many examples of New Zealand furniture made from Smee catalogues and a paper by Andrew Montana on Smee & Sons in colonial Australia investigates the reach of Smee into the wealthier homes of the colonies, both by sale and by local makers using Smee catalogues as pattern books.

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Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. 大東亜新秩序建設 ... [&c] [Dai Toa Shin Chitsujo Kensetsu ...]. n.p. [c1940?] Two colour prints 24x26cm. Folded vertically; in excellent shape. sold

Two charming fan design specimens celebrating the co-prosperity sphere which would be the culmination of - as the military assured the nation constantly - not invasion and conquest but a crusade; one hundred million, one heart.

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Exhibition - Tokyo 1907 東京勧業博覧会図会 - 風俗画報 [Tokyo Kangyo Hakurankai Zue - Fuzoku Gaho]. Tokyo, Fuzoku Gaho 1907. Five volumes 26x19cm, publisher's colour illustrated wrappers; a large folding colour view in the first issue, at least two double page colour illustrations in each of the others, monochrome plates and photo illustrations. Au$500

A set of the five special issues of the Fuzoku Gaho devoted to the 1907 Tokyo Industrial Exhibition. The Fuzoku Gaho (1889 - 1916) was Japan's first graphic magazine. I'd like to know who the artist was of some of these plates. They masterfully capture the eagerness for the new, the wonder, the distractions, the shared delights, and the weary resignation of some parents.
The 1907 exhibition was conceived as an international exhibition but this ambition fizzled due to lack of enthusiasm, if not nerve, on the part of officialdom. Nonetheless this was big stuff, expansive in its inclusion of technology, culture, the arts and popular entertainment - introducing not one but two ferris wheels to Tokyo. It did pretty good business, atttracting some six or seven million visitors.

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