Rare books from W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera

Amsterdam: Daniel van den Dalen, 1691-1693. Four books and one pamphlet in two volumes. Quarto. [4],[4],[16],138,[2];[8],262,[2];11; [8],32,188,[2];[6],277,[3] pp., including portrait frontipiece and facing description leaf in first volume and in-text illustration of the Oldenburg Horn on p. 141 of fourth book. Contemporary parchment, manuscript spine titles. Autograph signature of the author on half-title verso of first book, title-page verso of second book, and following the introductions of third and fourth books. Matching contemporary ownership inscriptions of C. V. D. Hell on title pages of first and third books; early ownership inscription of "[?]. [?]. v. d. Bosch" on front free endpaper of both volumes; 1961 gift inscription on front free title page of first volume; occasional contemporary underlining and marginalia throughout; booksellers' pencil notations in front and rear endpapers of both volumes. Boards bowed, parchment moderately soiled and, in first volume, turn-ins separating from… Read More

Philadelphia: Printed for Thomas Dobson [by Archibald Bartram], 1804. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. [13],10-151,[22],152-219 pp. plus 2 folding plates. Antique-style quarter calf and marbled boards, gilt leather label, endpapers refreshed. Minor chips at outer corners of title leaf, professionally repaired. Mild toning throughout, heavy toning at edges of rear endpapers, light offsetting in plates. Very good to near fine. "Said to be the first book on distilling printed in the United States" - Amerine & Borg. The author, Michael August Krafft of Bristol, Pennsylvania, received a fourteen-year-term patent in 1801 for an improvement in stills, around which, he writes in the book's Advertisement, "Many unsuccessful attempts have been made to deprive him of the fruits of six years of sacrifice of property and labor" with "[s]light evasions of form, without a departure from the principle." Krafft's patent beat the attempted evasions, and, by the time of writing, 217 distilleries were legitimately… Read More

Plattsburgh [N.Y.]: Printed by F. P. Allen, 1833. 280 pp, including 3 wood-engraved figures in text. Original cloth-backed plain paper over boards, in modern cloth clamshell case. Bookplate of Jacob L. Chernovsky in case. Binding worn, joints cracked, leaves wrinkled, mold stains in outer leaves, contents mildly foxed. Good. "To the medical bibliographer there are few more treasured Americana than the brown-backed, poorly printed octavo volume of 280 pages with the imprint "Plattsburgh, Printed by F. P. Allan, 1833'" (Osler 1972). William Beaumont (1785-1853), the "Father of Gastric Physiology," was serving as a U.S. Army surgeon in the Michigan Territory in 1822 when he treated Alexis St. Martin, an 18-year-old French-Canadian guide who had been wounded in his left side by an accidental discharge of a musket loaded with duck shot. The wound healed but left a permanent fistula - a hole through which Beaumont would access St. Martin's stomach to study gastric juice and digestive processes over the… Read More

Paris: Éditions de la Revue Verve, 1960. 36 cm. [17],95,[16] pp. including 96 monochrome plates, plus 24 color plates. Original color lithographic covers not present. In French. Brown morocco, red and tan morocco onlays, pictorially tooled in gilt, spine titled in gilt, turn-ins ruled in gilt, red suede doublures, all edges gilt. Binding signed in gilt by Catherine Stanescu. Housed in a clamshell case, quarter morocco and marbled paper over boards, gilt leather labels, tan suede doublures. Paper edges of case rubbed, joints and leather edges of case moderately scuffed and worn, else very good. Binding and contents of book fine. In 1930, Paris art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard commissioned Marc Chagall to produce a suite of etchings illustrating the Hebrew Bible. The project precipitated Chagall's two-month visit the following year to the Holy Land, where he and his family were guests of Meir Dizengoff, founder and mayor of Tel Aviv. Chagall biographer Jackie Wullschlager describes the object… Read More

Paris: Éditions Lemarget, 1930. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. 34 cm. 79,[6] pp. including 3 etchings by Sanyu, plus frontispiece portrait of the poet after Hwang Shen. Modern ochre red silk over boards, brass plate stamped through with title in Chinese on front board, original wrappers bound in. In red cardboard portfolio with red ribbon tie. Portfolio moderately worn, torn at corners. Brass plate faintly scratched and lightly oxidized, else fine, in a very good portfolio. Numbered 56 of 290 copies on vélin d'Arches (of a total edition of 306), specially bound in silk with a brass title cover plate. T'ao Ts'ien (365-427) (best known in English today as Tao Qian or by his birth name, Tao Yuanming), was a major Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties period, regarded as a founder and leading representative of the Fields and Gardens movement. Tao's translator is Liang Zongdai (1903-1983), a Guangxhi-born poet who had arrived in Europe in 1924 to study Western languages. He dedicates the work to his… Read More

Paris: Les Cent-Une : Société de Femmes Bibliophiles, 1961. Folio. [2],140,[3] pp. including 10 original etchings by André Masson: 9 double-page aquatints in colors and one single-page aquatint printed 9 times, each in a different tint and section heading. Signed by the artist and by the president and vice president of the Société de Femmes Bibliophiles. Loose signatures in original printed wrappers, portfolio (maroon cloth and paper over boards, silver spine title), and clamshell case (blue cloth, printed paper spine label, colored patterned endpapers). Light toning at edges of wrappers, minor stains (not exceeding 1/4 inch) at foot of front wrapper panel, portfolio lightly scuffed, case lightly rubbed. Internally near fine, untrimmed. The twenty-first book published by the elite international society of women bibliophiles, Les Cent-Une, printed in 140 copies on large Rives paper, numbered I-CI for members of the society and 1-39 for collaborators in the project. This is copy VIII, printed for… Read More

1976. Pen and ink and wash on paper. Printed titles and lyrics pasted to liner sheets. Approximately 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches (images), 15 x 14 1/2 inches (sheets). Cover art dated, "26.i.76-3.ii.76" (i.e., begun January 26, 1976, and completed February 3, 1976). Crop marks and other notes on all three sheets in the hand of the artist. Liner-notes sheets mounted to board. Tape remnants and residue in left margin of cover sheet (not affecting image), remnants of framing tape at top edge of cover image sheet verso; light soiling and minor stains on verso. Light soiling at edges of liner-notes sheets. The original art accompanying the album of Vienna-born composer Michael Mantlers jazz-rock settings of six of Edward Gorey's tales, sung by British psychedelic rock pioneer Robert Wyatt: "The Sinking Spell," "The Object-Lesson," "The Insect God," "The Doubtful Guest," "The Remembered Visit," and "The Hapless Child." The cover art includes images derived from each of these stories, making it the only known… Read More

Image 9 3/4 x 7 inches, sheet 12 x 9 inches. Pen and ink on paper. Signed with "EG" monogram. Crop marks in margins. Traces of pencil guide lines, artist's corrections in white tempera, small ink flecks throughout. Near fine. A drawing made to accompany a listing for the Fashion Institute of Technology's exhibition, "The Little Black Dress and Other Signs of Status," in the March 27, 2000, issue of THE NEW YORKER, appearing only weeks before Edward Gorey's death on April 15. It is one of Gorey's most elaborate later pieces, containing balloons, bangles, a beach pail, a bodysuit, platform shoes, canvas sneakers, skis, gender nonconformity, near nudity, a ballerina in bat wings, a child with a dog aloft on a leash, a widow in a veil, and other characters perched around the letters, "B-L-A-C-K," with a young woman at the center in the eponymous outfit.

[ca. 1950]. Pen and ink on paper. Approximately 5 x 7 1/2 inches. Signed with Gorey's early monogram, "EStJG" (for "Edward St. John Gorey"). Fine. An unpublished, unrecorded early Christmas image of an Earbrass-type man and angel holding a banner reading, "JOYEUX NOÊL."

[1996]. Watercolor and ink on paper. First two images approximately 3 1/3 x 7 2/3 inches, sheets 5 x 10 inches; third image approximately 2 1/4 x 6 3/4 inches, sheet 4 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches. Traces of graphite guide lines; graphite inscriptions, L and R, on first and second sheets, respectively. Colored illustrations for Peter L. Bernsteins article, "The New Religion of Risk Management," in the March-April 1996 issue of HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW. The first two images show Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat bearing lighted torches, as figures of "old religion" walk off into the night. The third shows the same Enlightenment thinkers behind three painted wheels inscribed with "3," "7," and "9." Responding to a question of how fairly to divide money wagered on an interrupted game of dice, Pascal and Fermat together solved an old mathematical puzzle, laying the foundation of probability theory. But today, Bernstein asks, "Have we replaced old-world superstitions with a dangerous reliance on numbers?"

[Late 1940s]. Watercolor and ink on paper. Image approximately 2 1/3 x 1 1/2 inches, sheet 4 2/3 x 3 1/4 inches. Paper toned, faint one-inch crease at left edge. An unpublished, unrecorded work, circa late 1940s, of a gentleman walking in night clothes with his eyes closed. The figure is rendered in a style anticipating the look of Mr. Earbrass, the protagonist of Edward Gorey's 1953 first novel, THE UNSTRUNG HARP, and other "Earbrass-type" figures of the early 1950s.

[ca. 1994]. Image 8 x 10 inches, sheet 10 1/4 x 12 inches. Pen and ink on paper. Signed with "EG" monogram. Traces of pencil guide lines in margins, artist's corrections in white tempera. Pencil measurement inscription in lower margin. Light stains in margins (largest 3/8 x 1/4 inches), most visible in lower margin; tiny stains (not exceeding 1/12 inch) in lower portion portion of image. Very good to near fine. Between 1992 and 1997, the PBS-affiliated SIGNALS gift catalog issued ten limited-edition lithographic prints from art commissioned from Edward Gorey. The present drawing, made for LITHOGRAPH No. 4 (first published in 1994), later traveled in ELEGANT ENIGMAS, the first international exhibition of Gorey's works, curated by Karen Wilkin. It appears as the final image in the exhibition's catalogue and the as the sole image on the rear panel of its dust jacket. Eventually entitled "Gazebo," the drawing presents a 19th-century séance taking place outdoors in winter. Objects float around the… Read More

[Kathmandu, Nepal: Angus Maclise], 1972. Folio (15 inches). [10] pp., including in-text woodblock illustrations and 4 full-page woodblock prints tipped in. In original pictorial wrappers, all on handmade rice paper. Fine. Numbered 144 of 150 copies, with editor's manuscript note in colophon, "corrections: | print 2: Arhat | print 3: Yabyum." The first of three issues of TING PA, a periodical of "Nepali poetry and songs, Tibetan magics & mantras old and new - in translations - and of course our poets/freaks writing in their native tongue, and woodblock prints, a specialty of Kathmandu, both traditional and original" (colophon). The numbered prints, from woodblocks supplied by Ian Alsop and Francis Brooks and hand-printed in Swayambhu by Ato Tamting Sija, show figures of Tibetan and Nepali Buddhism: Dakini, Arhat, Yabyum, and "Dancing Skeletons" (Citipati).

Kathmandu: [Angus Maclise and Francis Brooks], 1973. Folio (18 1/4 inches). [16] pp., including numerous woodblock illustrations (printed variously in black and red) plus 1 full-page woodblock print tipped in. In original pictorial wrappers, all on handmade rice paper. Small closed tears at head of front wrapper, light discoloration from original paste affixing large print, else fine. Numbered 102 of 150 copies. The second of three issues of TING PA, one of the early publications of the circle of American and European expatriate writers and artists living in Kathmandu during the 1970s. The woodblock illustrations include Himalayan and East Asian subjects, chiefly from religious traditions, as well as images drawn from the Rider-Waite Tarot.

[New York]: [s.n.], 1979. First Edition. Softcover. Near fine. [14] loose leaves, 6 inches, comprising [13] illustrated postcards illustrated and hand-colored on recto and captioned on verso and [1] colophon card signed and numbered by the artist. Contained in original colored pictorial envelope. Envelope lightly toned and mildly worn. Cards fine. Number 9 of the first edition, limited to 76 signed copies (50 numbered copies for sale, 26 lettered copies reserved for use of the artist and publisher). A set of postcards illustrating thirteen traits with an anthropomorphic lizard and the capital letter, "I": Inanity, Inconstancy, Indecency, Indecision, Indigestion, Indolence, Ineptitude, Innocence, Inquisitiveness, Insipidy, Insouciance, Inspiration, and Intractability. Edward Gorey hand-colored each of the 13 illustrated cards and the envelope in watercolor and several of the cards additionally in casein. "Of the several hand colored limited edition Gorey pieces created over the years, this is the… Read More