Izumi Kojiro. [Wayo Kagu Hinagata]. Osaka, Matama Seikado 1902 (Meiji 35). Two volumes 12x18cm, publisher's wrappers with title labels; semi measured drawings throughout. Minor signs of use, rather good. Au$250
A nifty pattern book of Japanese and western furniture designs, clear enough that a decent carpenter/joiner could build straight from the book. There are several designs for display and shopfittings among the bureaus, tripod tables, screens and tansu.
Catalogue - printed photograph mounts. Asanuma Shokai. [Shashin Daishi Teika-hyo]. n.p. Asanuma Shokai 1903 (Meiji 36). 18x23cm publisher's decorated wrapper; [8]pp and 12 pages of illustrated examples in various monochromes. A nice copy. Au$500
A mountain of printed and most decorative mounts for studio photographs were produced but this is the first catalogue of them I've seen. Most of these appear to be actual examples produced for photographers in Japan, Hong Kong, China and maybe Manchuria - judging by the Russian type. As an example of maybe a dim corner of photographic history - I don't know enough to judge - this is pretty good, but as an example of a dark corner of graphic design and commercial printing this is fabulous.
The last plate is an array of decorative borders.
BINET, Rene. Esquisses Decoratives. Paris, Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts [c1905]. Folio, loose as issued in four fascicules in illustrated wrappers, all in publisher's portfolio of cloth backed illustrated boards; [2],14pp and 60 plates, 13 pochoir and a few others with a second colour added, b/w illustrations through the text. A rather good copy. Au$1600
Binet, like many architects and designers, followed Haeckel into the microscopic world for grotesque and fantastic inspiration but married such modernity with historicism in a singular way. Durant (in 'Ornament') calls Binet 'in many respects the typical French Art Nouveau designer' which, apart from being too dismissive, is just not right. Many of his designs, particularly the coloured graphics, are ultra modern high art nouveau but much of his work has an oddly arcane, recherche effect - in which something as modern as an electric light switch modelled on the forms of diatomes or radiolaria and treated with Beaux Arts tradition becomes a mysterious if not menacing almost gothic artifact. Without claiming anything of the same stature, or even similar results, for Binet he could probably be more usefully likened to Gaudi. This is an exposition of ideas for every school of design that Binet could encompass - from architectural detail to pochoir graphics; shop fronts to tapestry; stained glass to gardens; jewellery to mosaics.
Catalogue - Garden Furniture. John P. White, Bedford. A Complete Catalogue of Garden Furniture and Garden Ornament. By John P. White, The Pyghtle Works, Bedford ... Xmas, 1906. Bedford 1906. Quarto publisher's printed wrapper (a missing piece from the back wrapper expertly replaced); 112pp illustrated in line and photo throughout. A couple of related flyers loosely inserted, quite a good copy. Au$875
From pots to bridges and greenhouses; an extensive range, essential for the chic but thoroughly English - ie Arts & Crafts - garden. White made furniture designed by Baillie Scott and some of this stuff may well be his but the designs here are, with two exceptions, uncredited except by inference from a passing remark to White himself. The two credited are by The Hon. Mrs. Anstruther. You don't withold credit from someone like her.
Many of the drawings are signed and while it isn't clear that the artist was also the designer those signed 'J.C.' are likely by James Crossland who designed furniture for White at about this time.
Kameda Yoshiro (or Kichirobei). [Wayo Kenchiku Shin Hinagata]. Osaka, Seikado 1907 (Meiji 40). Six volumes 22x15cm, publisher's wrappers with title labels; illustrated throughout with plans, elevations, measured drawings etc. Wrappers with some surface rubbing or insect grazing; a pretty good set. Au$850
I'm not sure whether this should be described as Japanese principles applied to western design or the other way round. I think both, if it matters. An excellent builder's pattern book that was certainly put to wide use.
There is a 2008 learned paper by Yanigasawa and Mizoguchi that shows how Kameda introduced Japanese carpentry and the modular system into western design but all except the precis of their paper is in Japanese so I have no idea how they go about proving their point. They do tell us that Kameda was a master carpenter in Fukuoka.
NICHOLSON, Charles A. & Hubert C. CORLETTE. Modern Church Building. London 1907. Quarto publisher's printed wrapper; pp241-284, numerous illustrations and plans. Au$50
An offprint from the Journal of the R.I.B.A. An attempt to re-ignite some interest in the subject, given that 'ecclesiology was talked to death fifty years ago' and the 'last contribution to our subject which is of any considerable value was J.T. Micklethwaite's racy little book on modern parish churches'. This possibly refers to Micklethwaite's 'Parish Churches in the Year 1548' published in the Journal of the Royal Archaeological Institute, 1878. At least I hope it does.
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.
Kimono design. Shirokiyagofukuten? [Ashide Oyo Moyo?]. n.p. [191-?]. 54x39cm limp cloth with brushed title label; 30 original colour designs in gouache. A working book and pretty good for such a thing. Au$2000
A giant (comparatively) early 20th century set of finished designs for customers or maybe a pattern book; certainly they had a life before they were made into this book. They have been numbered one to thirty and some captions or annotations added at much the same time as they were painted. A couple have had a top corner cut out and a piece painted the same colour with the number and an annotation has been over laid. Two that had annotations that would have been cropped when the sheets were trimmed and bound have been retained, folded over. The subtitle above the main title translates more or less as 'pending designs'.
On the back cover is written Shirokiyagofukuten which was an Edo/Tokyo kimono seller, haberdashery, department store for about three hundred years until it petered out in the 1960s. These mostly plant based designs, though, and the pattern books which came from designs like this, seem much more Kyoto than Tokyo.
This is the second Shirokiyago album I've found. I'd like to think more might be out there but I won't hold my breath.
DAVISON, Ralph C. Concrete Pottery and Garden Furniture. NY, Munn 1910. Octavo, very good in publisher's decorated cloth; xiv,196p and publisher's list, 140 photo illustrations, diagrams and line drawings. Au$75
First edition. Exactly the sort of information which, in the wrong hands, leads to unspeakable evil. In general I'm in favour of knowledge for the masses and the unveiling of secrets held within cabalistic trades but this steps over the line. There isn't anything in here to take exception to, the examples are unremarkable, sometimes handsome, but I've seen too much of what happens when just anyone is given access to concrete and the means to knock up a mold.
Design. An album of designs for textiles and/or paper. c1913-1920's? Large folio cloth [620x430mm]; 24 card leaves with 39 mounted original colour block prints (3 double page). Expected signs of use but nothing drastic; one print removed. Au$1200
Doubtless the designer's album of designs, these are proof prints from the blocks, each show the shape where the repeat pattern fits. The first pages are annotated with details of the client ('Achete a George. 9 Rue St Fiacre Paris' - in earlier decades this was the home of a calico manufacturer, which makes sense, and now houses a public relations firm and Ella Bache, which is neither here nor there) and the engraver (Gillet, sometimes in concert with someone else); the details dwindle as the album proceeds until we reach the large and dramatic geometric design in black and white which was "vendu a Mrs Bosset".
Dating these designs to 1913 would seem foolish but for the first few leaves being dated 1913 in the top corner; two or three are dull, traditional floral patterns but the rest, while by no means radical avant garde, would sit more happily in the next decade or two - some are really quite stylish. The theme is floral, or at least botanical although one is based on a Chinese cloud pattern; several are oriental in style or inspiration and one is a very stylish piece of Japanese abstraction.
I'm pretty sure this is the work of a Japanese designer in Paris, partly because it most recently came from Tokyo and partly because of the modern simplicity of several designs.
TAUT, Bruno. [Arupusu Kenchiku] Alpine Architektur. Hagen, Folkwang 1919 [ie Tokyo, 1944]. 36x26cm publisher's flexible cloth and dustwrapper; title page in Japanese and 37 leaves consisting of 29 monochrome mounted leaves (title and contents leaves, five section titles and 22 plates) and eight colour lithographs. Covers chewed around the edges and along the spine, dustwrapper torn but pretty much all there. Usual browning of the uncoloured leaves. With the booklet containing the Japanese translation. Au$700
This might be the most curious Japanese book on western architecture. It's officially part of the collected works of Taut in Japanese (Tauto Zenshu) but while his other works were translated and collected into four solid sensible octavo volumes, here the original has been followed faithfully, lavishly. A translation was provided as an inserted booklet.
It has been sorted out thanks to the generous diligence of a librarian at the Art Institute of Chicago (the only library I could trace that had both versions) who, twice, compared them side by side and sent me a list of seven plates that vary in image size, that this isn't a re-issue of original sheets - once a common claim. So this is no photographic process reprint; the colour plates are proper colour lithographs that match the originals. While there's no doubt that elaborate and fine printing could be and was done in war time it still doesn't make sense. The flimsy translation booklet is what we expect from wartime printing - why not do a better job with that? The binding is war time, the printing is not.
So when were these plates produced? Were they prepared with Taut when he was in Japan - by 1936? The whole business of a collected edition of Taut in the middle of the war becomes something of a circular puzzle. Japan's ties with Germany are clear enough and the Japanese showed their appreciation of radical German modernists, or expressionists, like Taut and Mendelsohn pretty much even before Germany did, and Taut had spent years in Japan. But he was part of the exodus from Germany in 1933 and had died in Turkey in 1938. Still, a devoted band of fans did manage what seems unimaginable and got the job done.
Visionary, the term mostly used to describe this book, is often just another word for lunatic and Taut's utopian scheme for these monumental crystal structures marching across the mountain ranges of the world is captivatingly nutty. If this were to be judged on its own we would have just another eccentric, if endearing, relic of a dead end dream. But, in place in a cohesive group of theoretical writing and extensive design, both built and unbuilt, possible and impossible, this book wielded influence beyond its limited circulation in advancing the notion that, for the architect, principle, theory and social concern were tools as important as a T-square.
GARNIER, Tony. Les Grands Travaux de la Ville de Lyon. Etudes, projets et travaux executes. Paris, Massin [1920]. folio, loose as issued in publisher's portfolio of cloth backed printed boards; 12pp and 56 plates - drawings, plans, elevations and photos. Au$1200
In Garnier's work in Lyon, instigated by the mayor Edouard Herriott from 1906 on, he realised many of the ideas set forth in his Cite Industrielle and some of the ideas in Cite Industrielle came from his work in Lyon. Une Cite Industrielle was largely finished by 1904 but not published until 1918 so he had the chance to plug a few of the gaps in his imagined city from his real city. Some projects here were completed in later years and some never realised.
Noshigami. A sample book of Noshigami - special paper for gifts - from the Kadoya Dyeing Workshop, Tokyo. Tokyo [1920s?]. 24x18cm, home made printed stiff wrappers; 105 leaves of colour printed samples on different kinds of paper, various sizes. Au$400
Noshi-gami is specially printed paper to be folded and attached to gifts as I understand it. The ineluctable beauty of some patterns is enhancedher, I say, by being in a quite smart cover decorated with locomotives.
Takanashi Yoshitaro [ed]. [Bunkamura no Kan'i Jutaku]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1922 (Taisho 11). 19x15cm, publisher's stiff wrapper with mounted illustration; title, 19pp of text and 54 plates printed on one side: photo illustrations, floor plans and renderings, one double page. Some marks and minor signs of use. Au$300
Fourth printing, two months after the first, of this architectural guide to Japan's model Culture Village (Bunkamura) of 'simple' housing built for the 1922 Peace Exposition; the purposeful introduction of idealistic westernised homes, rather than mansions and commercial buildings. Western mostly on the outside, not so much inside. Fourteen houses were built by different builders that had to meet 15 guidelines which did not stipulate that the outside had to be western but did demand windows rather than shutters and paper screens and that decoration should be avoided. Living spaces had to be chair style and kitchens and bathrooms thoroughly up to date. After that it was up to the designers and builders and the results are what's usually called ecleticism, hybrid, or borrowing, but isn't so simple in intent. And, as usual, what was borrowed from the west was often a reclamation of what the west had borrowed from Japan: arts & crafts in England, craftsman in America, nouveau, seccesion, werkstatte, and whatever else in Europe.
At much the same time as this, across town another Bunkamura - the Mejiro Bunkamura development by Tsutsumi Yasujiro - was being launched, reportedly inspired by the streetscape of Beverly Hills. The houses in both villages were for the new middle classes but Tsutsumi's village was for the upper middle class. Much of what was built during the twenties was destroyed during the war but the remaining fragments show shared characteristics which I'd say, from the bit I've read about him, had nothing to with any idealism in Tsutsumi.
[Bohyo to Kinenhi]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1923 (Taisho 12). 19x13cm, loose as issued in publisher's printed boards; 50 leaves, mostly plates printed on one side. An excellent copy. Au$100
One of the apparently endless series of small architecture monographs, Kenchiku Shashin Riuju. I wonder if anyone knows how many there were. Some are intriguing and some are pretty drab. Many require a dogged love of gateways and tea rooms. This one is pretty good.
Gravestones and memorials, a good mix of old school kitsch and moderne, a few to the edge of extreme. They can be examples of pure design, being free and limitless, as the foreword says, and here are offered as a lesson to Japanese to reform their gloomy and sad approach to marking their dead in the landscape.
Shop architecture. [Shoten Kenchiku Oyobi Tento Keikaku Zuan]. Tokyo, Kenchikushoin 1924 (Taisho 13). Oblong folio, 26x39cm publisher's decorated cloth (a couple of nibbles) and mildly battered printed card case; [10]pp, 50 b/w plates, [4]pp. A nice copy. Au$1350
Modern and moderne shop buildings and store fronts; essential if you want to rebuild Tokyo after the earthquake and before the fire bombing. This is, of course, part of the post earthquake reconstruction effort: the results of a competition held by the equivalent of the Tokyo chamber of commerce. The plates, elevations and floor plans, are reproduced from measured drawings and look ready to build but I wonder about one (by Shibahara Niro) which, the facade at least, seems to be taken straight from Bruno Taut's crystal alpine architecture. The requirements: frontage, height etc, are spelt out in the introduction and I presume fit an average commercial lot. At the end are designs for shop fronts.
Ishimoto Kikuji. [Kenchikufu]. Bunriha Kenchikukai 1924 (Taisho 13) 27x20cm publisher's cloth backed boards blocked in black and gilt (cover browned); 14pp and 50 plates being a colour frontispiece and the rest b/w photos. A little browning or spotting at the very ends, quite a good copy. I am convinced that the inscription on the front fly begins with - day 5, the day this was published - and ends with - author. What comes in between ...? Au$1000
First edition; the architectural souvenirs of a trip to Europe and America by a founder of the Secessionist Architecture Group - Bunriha Kenchikukai. Germany is front and centre, if you haven't already spotted that from the cover. At the end of the preface he wonders whether to die for his principles like Gropius, indulge his hobbies like Poelzig, or dream like Taut. What he did in the end was found a firm that now builds massive projects that look like a thousand other buildings.
The radical architectural groups at this time were the Secessionists - formed in 1920 by six graduates of Tokyo Imperial University, growing to nine members - and the Barrack Decoration Company - formed by Kon Wajiro, Yoshida Kenkichi and a disparate group of designers and artists after the earthquake - who rushed around decorating the temporary buildings thrown up in the ruins. Parallel but further off was Mavo which also ran around improving barracks and makeshifts for a while. Naturally the purist Bunriha despised the Barrackists. Architecture could be art but artists could never be architects. Secessionist Takizawa was not so polite about it.
Exhibition - Tokyo 1922. [Heiwa Kinen Tokyo Hakurankai Jimu Hokoku]. Tokyo Fucho 1924 (Taisho 13). Two volumes 26x19cm, publisher's embossed wrappers (browned); 681pp, heaps of illustrations: folding colour plans, architectural elevations and plans, photo plates, etc. Browning and foxing expected from the paper but still a rather good fresh copy. Au$1350
The official report on the 1922 Tokyo Memorial Peace Exposition is the very model of what an official report on an exhibition should be. You could just about rebuild the whole thing from this. The detail extends to measured drawings of light fittings, plans of the garden beds and coloured reproductions of the tickets and advertising.
The 1922 Peace Memorial Exhibition, celebrating the League of Nations and a bright future, was the most lavish national Expo ever held. The pavilions were a mix of stately, ultra modern and funfair fairy tale.
Architecture competition. [Kokusai Shaonto]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1924 (Taisho 13). 19x13cm, loose as issued in publisher's printed boards; 50 leaves, mostly plates printed on one side (actually 48 as two are double page carrying two numbers); renderings, elevations and plans. Wear to spine, dust marks or darkening to the very top edge of several plates, a decent secondhand copy. Au$150
Here are the winners and honourable mentions from a competition for a tower of gratitude for international aid after the 1923 earthquake. First and second prizes are graced with overwrought dramatics but are hardly radical. Things get more interesting after that.
One of the apparently endless series of small architecture monographs, Kenchiku Shashin Riuju. I wonder if anyone knows how many there were. Some are intriguing and some are pretty drab. Many require a dogged love of gateways and tea rooms. This one is up top.
Outside Japan, Worldcat finds one entry, at Queensland University dated 1929 for some reason, but the university's four entries for the title, including a microform, don't actually locate a copy.
HOPKINS, Henry Powell. Sources of Memorial Ornamentation. Vermont Marble Company 1924. Quarto, very good in publisher's gilt decorated boards, cloth spine; 44pp, 14 plates. Au$75
Something of a trade catalogue:- a primer of the basic styles - Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Gothic and Colonial - with suggestions for their application to modern gravestones.
[Werkbund]. PFLEIDERER, Wolfgang [ed]. Die Form Ohne Ornament. Werkbundausstellung 1924. Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags 1925. Quarto, excellent in publisher's cloth and dustwrapper; viii,22pp, photo illustrations on 89 plates and adverts. Au$200
Third and fourth thousand. The Werkbund displayed for 1924: from soap to gravestones, cutlery to satchels.
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.
SUGDEN, Alan Victor & John Ludlam EDMONDSON. A History of English Wallpaper 1509 - 1914. NY, Scribners, London, Batsford [1926]. Hefty quarto, excellent in publisher's gilt cloth, dustwrapper and dropfront box (the hinges and corners of this sometime strengthened and a title label added to the spine). xiii,281pp, 70 mounted colour, numerous photo plates. A most appealing copy and Cecil B. De Mille's copy with his Iribe bookplate. Au$500
Kon Wajiro. : [Minzoku to Kenchiku : Heimin Kogeiron]. Tokyo, Isobe Koyodo 1927 (Showa 2). 19x13cm publisher's cloth and printed card slipcase (spine dulled); 115 illustrations, six folding. Name on the box. Au$150
First edition of Wajiro's collection of writings before and after the Kanto earthquake, charting his development from chronicler of folk architecture and crafts to modernologist. Minzoku to Kenchiku translates as folk customs and architecture so Kon warns in his preface that anyone expecting concrete architectural applications to current needs will be disappointed. Part four (of four) dates from the earthquake and is devoted to the makeshift shelters and barracks. Kon and an odd collection of designers, architects and designers formed the Barracks Decoration Company aiming to bring some vestiges of beauty, humanity and surprise to grim emergency sheds and shacks. From there it was a natural progression to modernology, the science of the present.
Shogakusei Zenshu. Murayama Tomoyoshi. [Ongaku no Hanashi to Syokashu]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1927 [Showa 2]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; one colour plate, b/w illustrations throughout. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy. Shogakusei Zenshu no.67. Covers - front and back - by Murayama Tomoyoshi. Au$125
The Shogakusei Zenshu, or Complete Works for Elementary Schools, runs to some 88 volumes of educational texts and literature - much of this in translation; few of them seem elementary. This one covers music. Murayama maybe leads the list of avant-garde heros of interwar Japan. Founder of MAVO and communist troublemaker he had books and plays banned, ended up in prison and produced lively, humourous illustrations for children.
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