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>Tea Label. Smile Extra Choicest Spring Leaf Japan Tea. n.p. n.d. (early c20th?) Colour woodcut 39x34cm. An outstanding, crisply impressed copy. Au$225
A fabulous and puzzling large label - ranji - for export tea chests that would do any sixties' album cover proud. I have learnt that woodcut printing survived for tea labels after other printing went litho because exporters didn't want the ink smell contaminating their tea. Printing quality was high, this was international advertising, but the labels that survive are of course remainders or samples. I take this to be a sample - the paper is good quality and heavy and the printing immaculate - for a label maybe never used. I have looked through hundreds of labels online without finding any Smile Tea. Can an expert put me straight?
This has what a label needs: bright colours, bold contrast, lively typography and an arresting design. But it doesn't have what other tea labels have: a pretty picture that foreigners will immediately recognise as Japan. No elaborately kimonoed beauty, no Fuji, no lucky god. No kimonoed beauty on a tea plantation terrace with a lucky god in attendance and Fuji in the distance. What we have is a happy but somehow sinister character.
With those ears he is surely a wrestler. But bald? Was there a happy bald wrestler famous enough in Japan that someone thought he might translate to the outside world? An ex-wrestler who became famous as the eternally cheerful muscle for the mob?
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Advertising. A shop banner for Crispo Potato Crisps. The Noisiest Crisp in the World. n.p. [Tingha, NSW 1950's?]. Colour silkscreen poster 16x46cm. An excellent copy. Au$150
Crispo crisps - not to be confused with any other Crispos elsewhere in the world, none of them as noisy - were made in Tingha by North West Delicacies maybe through to the mid-late sixties. Packets exist with the price changed by hand to decimal but that may be the work of a most thrifty shopkeeper.
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Market day at Queen Emma's
>Photograph. Richard Parkinson - New Britain. Photograph titled on the back in pencil: Market Day in Ralum - Parkinson. n.p. [188-?]. Albumen print 112x163mm; single weight paper. A bit rumpled, with a corner crease and a couple of short tears. Au$300
A portrait of Richard Parkinson presiding over a gathering. Brother-in-law of Emma Coe - Queen Emma of New Guinea - and pioneer colonial of the area, Parkinson established Emma's plantation at Ralum, near Rabaul, in 1882. Parkinson married Emma's sister Phebe in Samoa in 1879 and they joined Emma and Thomas Farrell in the Bismarck Archipelago in 1882.
Parkinson has some reputation as an ethnologist and collector - a fair amount in the Australian Museum came thanks to him; his book and some papers, published in German, are now in English - but it was Phebe who was his translator with the locals. Apparently he never even learnt pidgin.
'Market day' is a euphemism to beat all. I see no-one set up to sell to each other. I see a huddle hoping they won't be treated too badly by master.
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NISBET, Hume. The Land of the Hibiscus Blossom; a yarn of the Papuan Gulf. London, Ward & Downey 1888. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in colour and gilt (tips worn, cloth a bit dull and discoloured); 23 full page ills by Nisbet. A second hand but quite acceptable copy. Au$185
First edition (only? there was an 1889 colonial issue and a 'new edition' in 1896 but I suspect these are re-issues of the same sheets) of Nisbet's first novel (of some 40) and one of the earliest novels of New Guinea from first hand experience. Nisbet insists on his accuracy of detail and was often criticised for proselytising at the expense of humour and excitement but his ideas have come into their own: "this is not a missionary tale, but the words of one who believes as ... Ruskin believes, that what the savage gains from religion and civilisation is not equivalent to his own beliefs when left alone." Despite dire warnings that a trip to New Guinea was near suicide,
>PETZENDORFER, Ludwig. Schriftenatlas. Neue Folge. Eine sammlung von alphabeten, initialen und monogrammen. Stuttgart, Julius Hoffmann [1905?]. Folio publisher's printed decorated cloth; [8]pp and 141 plates printed in varying or two or more colours. Quite good in worn original card case. Au$1500
Apparently published in parts between 1903 and 1905 this should not to be confused with Petzendorfer's first Schriften-Atlas published a decade or so earlier. This is a new and thoroughly up to date survey of alphabets and typefaces, monograms and signs; is a treasury of nouveau, jugendstil and secession styles; and is much scarcer than his first atlas. Designers are all named: Behrens, Grasset, Morris, Gradl, Lewis F. Day, Ellwood, Auriol, etc; in the case of types the foundries are named.
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Trade Unions. A Reply to the Commonwealth Public Service Commissioner - from the South Australian Post and Telegraph Association. Adelaide, Daily Herald Printers, July 1911. Octavo publisher's printed wrapper; 61pp. Mildly used. Stamp of the Tamanian P & T Association and inscription of the secretary. Au$75
A trenchant rejoinder traversed with vigorous candor according to the Adelaide Daily Herald in an article reviewing the dispute and this pamphlet. Being a white collar union dispute there doesn't seem to have beeen any bloodshed in this battle for just recompence for postmasters and telegraphists but the verbal violence is strenuous: "Machiavellian ... false note ... evasion ... wholesale slander ... confidence trick ... faking ... " Unlocated in Trove.
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>Ned Nimble Amongst the Bushrangers of Australia. London, Edwin J. Brett [188-?]. Two volumes large octavo, bound together in a modern wrapper with a copy of a cover mounted; original illustrated wrappers bound in. 276pp, 23 full page illustrations. Some repairs and splodges to the wrappers; natural browning of the paper in the first volume; still, rather good. Au$1250
Ned Nimble's Australian romp appeared in the 'Boys of England' in 1882 and in parts and collected editions in two versions.This is the first, coming out of the Boys of England offices. The other comes out of Harkaway House, a name change made in the early nineties. The second version came in, I think, 17 weekly parts adding up to 264 pages.
The wrappers are sensibly recycled with part numbers and price at the top (parts 28 and 30, price 4d) and volume numbers and new price stamped at the bottom (Nimble Series Vol 9 and 10; price one shilling). And the volumes are recycled from unsold parts with the original stab marks visible. I don't get how they could have spun this out to 30 parts, there are clearly 23.
Trove finds two copies of the first and one of this. But the covers of that one have different Nimble series volume numbers. Confused? Bored?
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Real Estate. The Historic Macarthur Estate. Auction sale on the ground Saturday, February 3rd, 1906 ... Richardson & Wrench, Ltd ... n.p. [Sydney 1906]. 12x18cm, printed self wrapper; 12pp including covers, photo illustrations - one double page - and a small sketch map. Au$80
The photos are mostly of grand homes in the neighbourhood - reassurances - and the centrefold is a view of a paddock: the estate about to be split into digestible portions.
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Sands & McDougall's Monthly Diary July 1892. [Melbourne 1892]. 105x70mm publisher's illustrated wrapper; 120pp including 32 diary pages - these used to memorialise a trip from Melbourne to England from March to September 1893; a few illustrated adverts; departures of the mails, railway timetables etc. Au$150
The neat, perfunctory diary notes record a trip so arid, so dull, that I hope it is all euphemistic code. These little books are near guaranteed not to survive but I'm astonished to find - rather, to not find any copies listed anywhere. Can this be right?
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How to complain in Condobolin
>Groceries. E. Sealey, Condobolin. With Compliments of the Season 1917. Sealeys. Printed by Lachlander Print, Condobolin 1917. 12mo flush cut reinforced printed wrapper (a bit used); 12 leaves (24pp) of printed announcements etc on green paper, each interleaved with four leaves of faint ruled notepaper; a total of 88pp by my arithmetic. The first page has some baffling notes, most in German. Sinister or what? Au$100
J.R. Sealey, Grocer of Condobolin - in the middle of NSW - must have had a prickly relationship with the town. The first page of text - on the back of the season's greeting - sets out rules for complaints, of which they'd had several during 1917. The other printed pages parade the wealth of things they stock and an illustrated reassurance that they care about their customers.
In 1929 J.R. Sealey went into the motor car game, which must have made everyone happier than groceries did: Sealeys are into their third generation of being the local Ford dealer. This, and anything else Sealey might have published, seems unknown.
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>Catalogue - fashion, haberdashey &c. Sweet Bros. Newton. Sweet Bros Winter Sale 1935 - Beats all Sales. Sydney, 1935. Quarto publisher's illustrated wrapper; 32pp, illustrated throughout. A neglected copy, rumpled, some tears, insect damage, the back wrapper quite chewed by insects. Au$120
I was about to admit this isn't the best copy of this catalogue but it may well be. I can't find any competition. The NL has a 1909 catalogue from the one time Syney landmark. Anything and everything else seems gone.
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Schisms of Sydney bookies
Rules of the Metropolitan Tattersall's Club. Established 1885. Sydney, S.E. Lees 1885. Slender 12mo publisher's roan lettered in gilt; [2],12pp. Inscribed by the secretary, Edward Farrell, with his compliment. Au$150
How many Tattersall's does a city need? These bookies are near as troublesome as clerics and avant-garde painters. As far as I can figure out there is Tattersall's, this splinter Metropolitan Tattersall's, and then another splinter City Tattersall's which still exists. How long the Metropolitan lasted I don't know. It was described as "short-lived" in 1903. In any case it was a place for bookmakers and punters to gather. The rules for bets, disputes and settlement days are perhaps a bit authoritarian, which is what led to the next schism. Trove finds the National Library copy of this and nothing else from the short-lived club.
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Sydney Regional Plan Convention. Sydney's Need. Being the second brochure of the Sydney Regional Plan Convention. [cover title]. An Exhibition of Plans & Photographs ... Sydney [printed by Shepherd & Newman] 1924. Octavo publisher's printed wrapper (marked); [16]pp with 12 mounted photo illustrations. Used but very decent. Winston Barnett's ownership label inside the front cover. Au$150
To accompany an exhibition held at Farmers in February and March 1924. The Sydney Regional Plan Convention was a fairly short lived attempt by a fairly heavyweight group of planners, architects, politicians, and civilians to convince the government that a "comprehensive and rational" plan for future development was essential. The bulk of this is a bit of polemic signed R.K.H. and B.J.W. - undoubtedly R. Keith Harris and B.J. Waterhouse. A quick glance at the comparative pictures - Sydney and elsewhere - suggests that the convention's main aim was neatness but perhaps this is an unfair judgment. The Convention's first brochure was a 1922 pamphlet also titled 'Sydney's Need'.
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>Shinoda Senka & Utagawa Yoshiharu, 明治英名百詠撰 [Meiji Eimei Hyakueisen]. Tokyo, Murakami 1879? 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with title label; one double page and one full page colour woodcut, 120 half page woodcuts on 60 double folded leaves. Two clean tears across the paste down title page without loss, a well read copy but solid and decent enough. The illustrations, not so well printed, are by Utagawa Yoshiharu. Au$100
A popular, poetic, gallery of famous folk of the Meiji period - the first bit of it anyway. There are the expected statesmen and lords but there are also scholars, a handful of women and what look to to be unsavoury reprobates. Perhaps they are great statesmen. I'm equally ignorant about the verse with each portrait. I presume these aren't cheeky limericks or Clerihews. Worldcat finds one copy outside Japan.
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>Isotype. NEURATH, Marie. Railways Under London. London, Max Parrish [1948]. Large octavo publisher's cloth and dustwrapper (this showing signs of use with a couple of small chips and a couple of closed tears); 32pp, colour illustrations throughout. A repaired closed tear in the half title - the left hand side of the double page title; a read, still rather good copy. Au$300
What is it about the London underground that made for such good modernist graphic art? The subways, the metros, the u-bahns, these all have their moments but none of them so consistently inspired such clever design. Marie Neurath, one third, with husband Otto and Gerd Artnz, of the team that invented and developed isotype - an attempt at a universal graphic language - did quite a few of these isotype books for kids after the war but this one is by far the best.
*Click on the picture to see more.
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>Moveable book. BINGHAM, Clifton. The Surprise Zoo. Verses by Clifton Bingham. London, Ernest Nister [1910?]. Small quarto publisher's cloth backed illustrated glazed boards; [4]pp and six chromolitho moveable plates, each with facing text. Inner hinges cracked, signs of use but quite good, all plates work and missing only part of a flamingo head from a small flock. A christmas gift inscription dated 1911. Au$350
The animals change in each cage as the tabs are pulled: Lion for cubs, monkeys for kangaroo, toucan for flamingos and so on. The surprise for me was how many copies I could find in the world's libraries: one.
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Sir George Grey. Policeman X. The Great Medicine Man of Dancoyle. By Policeman X. Auckland, Wilson & Horton printers 1879. Octavo publisher's printed wrapper; 4pp. A short tear in the top margin. Au$150
A short but closely packed attack on Sir Gerge Grey, dating from somewhere around the end of his spell as Premier (1877 to October 1879). This is the tale of Dr Gammon and his "celebrated 'Grey Powders' which were simply a mystic compound of manhood suffrage and triennial parliaments, flavoured with a strong dash of communism".
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Chinese in Australia. Chinese Question: Correspondence, and Report of Conference Held at Sydney, June, 1888. [Hobart] Govt Printer, 1888. Foolscap, modern plain wrapper; 39pp. Au$400
The Chinese Question (ie how do we get rid of them?) brought the colonies together as few other problems ever could. Gathered here is a useful compilation of official and unofficial correspondence from all the colonies, including letters and petitions from Chinese residents in Australia and news from America about their new treaty with China. The colonies had to find their way round directions from London where measures such as the poll tax were seen as a threat to Chinese-British relations. The result was The Chinese Immigration Restriction Act of 1888.
One point that maybe deserves more attention is that much of the current proud tradition of strict quarantine in Australia has its origin in intercolonial co-operation in declaring ports of embarkation for Chinese immigrants as Infected Places. Prior to this attempts to establish a national quarantine policy had little success.
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>HOPKINS, Francis R.C. Souvenir of the Dramatic Works. Printed for private circulation only. Sydney 1910. Large octavo publisher's red morocco (edges rubbed); [7],32pp, photo illustrations & facsimile playbills on various coloured papers. Some unnecessary annotations on the last couple of pages by an intermediate owner. Au$150
Inscribed by Hopkins to A.B. Triggs. The synopsis and playbills for William Dampier's productions of Hopkins' plays from 'Good For Evil' (1876) to his yellow peril romp, 'Reaping the Whirlwind' - published in 1909 but despite the mock playbill here, never produced.
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>Death. Naosuke Gonda. 葬儀式附圖 [Sogishiki Fuzu]. Tokyo, Furukawa Yutakaho 1887(?). 225x150mm original wrapper with title label; 38 double folded leaves (ie 76pp) with numerous woodblock illustrations. An excellent copy. Au$225
A well illustrated guide to Shinto funeral ceremonies and burial. A rare book; a moderately thorough search finds only the NDL entry.
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>PLANAS, D. Eusebio. Historia de Una Mujer. Barcelona, Fugarull 1880. Folio contemporary quarter calf; [2]pp and 50 chromolitho plates including an illustrated title. Printed title browned, spots here and there, a rather good copy. Au$1050
A captivating moral tale in picture and scant words with - as is traditional in the best moral tales - all the attention lavished on the rise and triumph, the excesses and debauchery, of our beautiful heroine. Only a couple of plates show repentance and retribution - the last shows the wasted, destroyed beauty gazing plaintively and helplessly at the somewhat zombie-like nun who must be watching the approach of the angel of abject death.
Among the work's many delights is the portrait gallery of what would now be called creepy old perves, those older gentlemen that once could freely cluster around young beauties like vultures round a ripe zebra. Planas was a busy illustrator - trained as a lithographer in Paris, and the quality of these need no apology - whose best work centres around the games of the night and the pleasures of the flesh. Apparently this work was conceived as a series of cigarette cards before appearing in this much more satisfying format.
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[ATKINSON, Henry Dresser]. Jottings of Tasmanian Bird-Life. n.p. [Tasmania, offprint? c1890]. Octavo, stapled; drop title; 16pp (last blank). Au$50
The National Library's dating - one of the three copies found by Trove - should be ignored. Whoever created that entry should be either flogged or given a quick course in logic. Atkinson - clergyman, son of a clergyman and father of clergymen - gets an entry in Whittell but no bibliography; his brother gets a brief bibliography.
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Blowflies. This is "Lucy" the Green Blowfly Who Strikes Your Sheep. The Australian Wool Board [1948]. Octavo colour illustrated wrapper; [28]pp, illustrated throughout, a couple in colour. An old fold, a nice copy. Au$85
This would seem to be completely unknown but for two country papers that in late 1948 ran short notices about the booklet - 40,000 copies - being sent to sheep farmers everywhere. Lucy is cute in an Algy the ant way, cuter than the sheep.
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Water. The Ontario Well Boring Co. Limited. Melbourne, printed by Gergusson & Mitchell 1888. Octavo disbound; 11pp. Au$35
A prospectus or puff for the new company: a brief report followed by newspaper reports of their artesian well drilling exploits. Unrecorded.
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Poor room-keepers. Printed letter signed by Henry G. Douglass and E.M. Stephens importuning subscribers to found in Sydney a Poor Room-Keepers Society for the relief of sick and indigent room-keepers. November 12 1861. n.p. [Sydney 1861]. Foolscap broadside on blue paper. Folded. Au$25
While sturdy beggars and victims of vice and drunkenness are well provided for, the shy room-keeper down on his luck remains unnoticed.
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>Tokuriki Tomikichiro. 縞と絣 [Shima to Kasuri]. Kyoto, Uchida 1931-32. 10 volumes 25x35cm publisher's decorated wrappers (library labels on the fronts), original chitsu - folding case; 100 colour woodblock plates printed on one side of double folded leaves. Au$2100
A lively and charming set of pattern books of textile designs. Shima is stripes and kasuri is resist dying or ikat. In reproduction this appears cheerful and modest and it is cheerful, but the quality of block cutting and printing is astonishing.
Tokuriki, best known for his shin hanga prints of views and celebrated for his sosaku (creative) prints, was of the Kyoto school and made some good comments on the difference between Kyoto and Tokyo printmakers: "Perhaps Kyoto print artists are too accomplished technically. We were never gripped by the same rebellion against ukiyoe technique that motivated the Tokyo artists, ... and they're [Kyoto] proud of it; they like to point this up by saying: 'Tokyo artists can't get a hundred copies from their blocks'." (Statler; Modern Japanese Prints).
Here we have an early work, predating his first albums of views - also published by Uchida. Worldcat finds no complete set; the NDL might have a complete set; that's all I could find.
*Click on the picture to see a few more.
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BEST, Elsdon. The Maori Canoe. An acount of various types of vessels used by the Maori of New Zealand in former times, with some description of those of the isles of the Pacific ... Wellington, Govt Printer 1925. Quarto contemporary cloth (lightly flecked) with the original printed wrapper mounted on the front board; vi,312pp, map, some 170 photo illustrations, line drawings and diagrams. Dominion Museum Bulletin No.7. Au$200
The definitive work, it isn't superceded by Haddon's 'Canoes of Oceania' but forms a good companion. Best covers everything from tree felling to decoration and investigates the history of Polynesian migration.
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Catalogue - Buses and Trucks. Vulcan Motor & Engineering Co. Crossens. Vulcan Passenger Vehicles ... The Company, October 1921. Quarto, 8pp, stapled; numerous photo illustrations. A bit rumpled and used. Price slips pasted in. Au$50
Charabancs and buses and some vans and lorries on the last page.This is pretty close to marking Vulcan's entry into bus making.
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SPARROW, Walter Shaw. Our Homes and How to Make the Best of Them. London, Hodder & Stoughton 1909. Large stout octavo publisher's cloth; xii,280pp, 30 colour plates (six double page), numerous b/w photo illustrations, plans &c. A bit of spotting and a couple of minor flaws but quite a good copy of a book that didn't wear well. Au$100
A solid survey of what's up to date and fashionable, illustrating the work of Ashbee, Lutyens, Voysey, Newton, Brangwyn, Baillie Scott, Gimson, and others.
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>Dye colours. Kohiyama H. (?). An album of annotated dyed fabric swatches with the binding title, "Dyed Pattern - The Higher Technical School of Tokyo - H. Kohiyama." n.p. [191-?]. Oblong folio (28x38cm) half calf (scuffed and worn but solid); Some 1600 samples mounted on both sides of 62 lined leaves - plus some unused leaves. A couple of swatches missing and couple insect chewed. Copiously annoted in ink. Au$1500
The "Higher Technological School" of Tokyo was third name for what is now the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Founded in 1881 as the Vocational School it graduated to Higher in 1901.
As a colour dictionary I've not seen many that can match 1600 samples. Here is a thorough record of dye colours, their ingredients, recipes and processes. Much is Japanese but names, chemicals and quantities are in English and doubtless any reasonably proficient dyemaker, anywhere, could reproduce these colours now. I'm not sure what it means but I notice that some reds that include alizarine paste are not colour fast - a few have left strong impressions on facing pages.
I'd guess that H. Kohiyama was the instructor and this was likely bound by the school bindery.
*Click on the picture to see a couple more.
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Hikifuda. Benkyo Shoten? 和洋雑貨毛織物類 [Wayo Zakka Keorimono-rui]. Hikifuda - or handbill - for a sale of Japanese and western wool textiles. n.p. [190-?]. Colour lithograph broadside 38x26cm. A touch browned round the edges. Au$95
An exuberant yet elegant thoroughly up to the minute snapshot of a stylish woman - with her painfully exquisite daughter - graciously acknowledging the attention of the shop boy at a busy warehouse sale of fabrics.
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>ISHII, Usaburo [?]. 新撰大匠雛形大全 [Shinsen Taisho Hinagata Taizen]. Osaka, Seikado 1897 [Meiji 30]. Six volumes small quarto by size, publisher's embossed wrappers with title labels; illustrations throughout, a couple folding - all lithographed. The cover surfaces well grazed by insects, excellent inside; a rather good set. Au$850
First edition of this excellent builder/architect's pattern book - it was reprinted in 1910 - published just at the time when there was both a cultural argument and a government led reaction against the wholesale importation of western architecture into Japan. This particular book bridges the confrontation between a nationalistic return to ancient temple forms and the fervour for modernisation.
Two thirds of this book is traditional Japanese design, structure and carpentry but the last two volumes introduce western building designs and, in the details, western building methods. Here nuts, bolts and metal brackets replace traditional carpentry and forms in masonry are described. In the last volume are a series of profiles of mouldings, architectural hardware and fairly elaborate gates, fences and entries in western styles.
At this time architecture itself was an innovation - the first generation of trained architects were beginning to replace the craftsman, until then designer and builder. But the Imperial Palace, despite the Emperor's push for modernity for the country, was not built to the designs of any of the western or western trained architects who submitted designs; it was built by the Imperial Carpenter, who went on to teach many of these young, new architects then, in turn, responsible for the resurgence of Japanese historicism.
*Click on the picture to see a couple more.
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The first emoji novel?
>SELBORNE, John. The Thousand Secrets. London, Everett 1911. Octavo publisher's cloth with mounted colour illustration. A bit used, a bit browned; a pretty decent copy. Au$475
First edition of this thriller which surely must be the first emoji mystery. At the scenes of the crimes the villain leaves a cryptic typed smiling face. Did he or she kill only owners of typewriters or carry spares?
I'd say our cover artist never tried to make such a face with a typewriter but truth in advertising or book covers has never been desirable. "As is often the case in such tales, the criminals show far more intelligence than their pursuers," (The Adelaide Register).
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>Japanese 1920s graphic thriller. Preliminary sketches for a graphic story, probably for a magazine or pulp book. n.p. [192-?]. 23 sheets 22x15cm numbered to 21 with the last two (a bit smaller) unnumbered and two small paintings on red ribbon which don't seem to belong to the story but are of a piece with it. Two drawings to a page, all but a couple - pencil - in ink and wash. Au$450
Being illiterate doesn't stop me from recognising a timeless jazz age tale of crime, degradation, betrayal, forbidden lust and madness. This is clearly a good girl gone wrong story with a twist. Maybe more than one twist. The overt lesbian stuff was not that common in parallel western stories - book or film. This is pretty steamy stuff; in a tortured, fully dressed way. The drawings are signed but my translator can't decipher them. The accompanying text is mostly dialogue.
I was going to call this a gekiga but I found that term wasn't coined until the 1950s - introduced to divorce serious
comics from the increasingly juvenile connotations of 'manga'.
* Click on the picture to see more.
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>CORNELL, Sophia S. Cornell's Primary Geography for the Use of Schools. First Edition. 地学初歩 [Chigaku Shoho]. Yedo. [Edo (ie Tokyo), Watanabe [1866?]. 18x12cm publisher's wrapper (insect blemished, title label missing); [72]pp on double folded leaves and seven folding colour maps, two colour maps and some illustrations in the text. A stain in the top corner; a thoroughly decent copy. Au$500
I wonder what, if anything, a Japanese student made of Miss Cornell. After her nonsense about Japan, how could anything else she said be taken seriously? Miss Cornell's Primary Geography - one of a string of geographies she prepared for all stages of schooling - first appeared in New York in 1855. Here we are introduced to the concept and working parts of a map, then run through a brief introduction to the regions of the world.
There seem to be two printings of this "First Edition"; one dated "the 2nd year of Kei-ou" on the title and apparently without a colophon; the other (our copy) not dated, with a colophon. In this undated copy the text is within borders, the other not. Waseda University also has a third, quite different printing but their copy is severely defective and has no title page or colophon. A Japanese translation was made in 1867. Worldcat finds only one copy of this outside Japan.
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>Yamamoto G.S. [Tadashi]. The Conversations for Officers and Merchants, of the Japanese and English. 英和文章會話篇 [Eiwa Bunsho Kaiwahen]. Osaka, S.H. Okajima 1887. Small octavo (16x12cm) publisher's roan backed decorated boards (rubbed); [10],173,[1],[2 colophon]pp. Title page printed in red and black within a gold frame. Rear endpaper removed, rather good and fresh inside. Au$600
A pleasing little book with the usual amount of baffling and useless conversational gambits plus an emphasis on social niceties - dinners, drinking, dancing and so forth - and business. Worldcat finds only the NDL copy and so can I.
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London - Melbourne Air Race. Nederlands Succes. Melbourne Race. n.p. [1934?]. Colour lithograph on card 47x31cm, with a mounted colour illustration. Edges a bit knocked with a short tear in one corner; hanging strip or card stand on the back pretty much gone. Au$600
A shop placard for a new brand of cigars that celebrates the Dutch success in the Melbourne Centenary or MacRobertson Air Race. The Dutch KLM plane Uiver arrived second and won on handicap. The onlaid colour illustration is, I suppose, the cigar box label. I found a couple of adverts in newspapers dating into 1936 for Melbourne Race cigars but nothing else.
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POST, Emily. Emily Post's Etiquette. Condenced Japanese Edition. アメリカのよいお行儀作法 [Amerika no Yoi o Gyogi Saho]. [Tokyo?] Fujin Kurabu [Women's Club] 1950. Oblong octavo publisher's wrapper; 64pp, line drawings throughout, a few full page. Au$50
Here we are in occupied Japan when middle class American values and aspirations are force fed into the country. Who better to teach the Japanese how to behave like ambitious suburbanites wanting to make the country club than Emily Post? This was issued as a supplement by the Women's Club magazine. No copies located in any of the expected catalogues.
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Hashizume Kan'ichi. 大日本國盡 英字三體 [Dai Nihon Kunizukushi - Eiji Santai]. Tokyo, Wan'ya Keihe 1871 [Meiji 4]. 18x13cm publisher's wrapper (a bit used, label missing); 36pp on 18 double folded leaves; opening right to left. Au$300
A writing guide teaching how to read and write the English alphabet in its three guises but not in English. One of the earlier attempts at formulating what is now Romaji, Hashizume here standardizes Japanese place names into phonetic transliteration.
The Portugese missionaries had formulated a romanised system so that missionaries could instruct their Japanese victims without having to learn how to read Japanese but once they were tossed out of Japan such a system was quickly forgotten. It was only with the Meiji restoration and orders from the top that modernisation must follow that making Japanese intelligible to westerners became a desirable skill.
Worldcat finds a couple of copies in Japan, none outside.
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Syrian-Lebanese colonial Australian fiction
SHEHADI, B. [Beshara]. The Confession of Pontius Pilate. First written, as alleged, in Latin by Fabricius Albinus, a playmate of Pilate; translated into Arabic ... and rendered into English ... by B. Shehadi, ... now of Sydney, N.S.W. Sydney, printed by Geo. Booth 1893. Small octavo publisher's printed wrapper; 64pp. Some foxing but a nice copy. At the end Shehadi advertises Arabic lessons. Au$350
First edition of this biblical fantasia. I first supposed that B. Shehadi, lately student of Beyrout, was as much an invention as Fabricius Albinus but it seems not. He was, according to an online family history, born in Syria - now Lebanon - in 1871, came to Australia in 1891 and left in 1898. Not mentioned in the family history is that Shehadi ran into some police trouble in June 1898. He ended up in Orange, New Jersey where he died in 1955. In the meantime he published second, third and fourth editions of this, in 1917, 1943 and 1954.
This is not unknown to bibliographers but apparently once miscatalogued it has stayed there ever since. Ferguson, who ignored fiction, included it while Miller and Macartney never included it in Australian Literature. It remains a gap in Austlit. The fictional histories created by authors attempting to pass off a novel as fact are usually picked up immediately but I guess when it comes to stuff biblical, eyes cross and it is put onto an apocrypha shelf in the dark wastes of theology. So. Here we have a neglected Syrian/Lebanese colonial Australian novel. How many of those have you seen?
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>Baido Kunimasa [Utagawa Kunimasa IV]. 明治貴顕鑑 [Meiji Kiken Kagami]. Tokyo, Hoeidi 1888 (Meiji 21). 12x9cm publisher's wrapper with title label (ink inscription on the back cover); 15 double folded leaves giving one single page, one gatefold quadruple page, and 15 double page woodcuts. Actually all but a couple of leaves are quadruple folded - the printed leaves around double folded leaves of heavier paper making the book tougher, made to be handled often. Au$300
A nifty little book, a portrait gallery of eminent figures of the Meiji. But captured in action, not the studio poses of so many 'Eminent Men' galleries. These are woodcuts but they are, with true modernity, cut to resemble engravings. Worldcat finds only the NDL copy.
*Click on the picture to see a couple more.
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PORTER, Hal. Short Stories. n.p. n.d. [Adelaide, the author 1943]. Large octavo, 235x185mm, printed wrapper, 64pp. Cover a touch marked and used; a pretty good copy. Numbered and signed by Porter; an edition of 200 copies? Au$1500
Porter's first book by a long way and scarcer than an edition of 200 copies would suggest. Here's a lesson in the value of the horse's mouth: centuries ago I bought from Joy Robinson, Porter's close friend, copy number 2 inscribed to her with some added stuff. Joy told me with inarguable authority that copy number 1 went to Porter's mother. Trouble is, mother was near fifteen years dead when the book appeared.
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