N.d., circa early to mid-1940s. (Reference to Office of Price Administration, which existed between 1941 and 1947, and references to "Admiral Byrd Cloth", among other things, suggest the earlier part of this period.) 30 by 14 cm. Unpaginated, 24 pp. including wrap covers. Scarce, with no copies appearing on OCLC FirstServe. Loosely strung story about a cute cub who decides not to hibernate so that he can find out what autumn and winter are like in New York City, and all the fun he has as a result. On the rectos is narrated the story, while on the facing versos junior fashion items... View More...
N.d, but the latest date would be 1876 when the Otto Huster company filed for bankruptcy. The box itself is round like a hat box, with a blue paper pastedown label on top, and the round edges sewn together. Its dimensions are 23.5 cm tall, and 19 cm in diameter. The box has light abrasions and wear but is excellently preserved overall, with the label fully intact, its lettering perhaps faded but still easily legible and attractive. The mitt is an incredible survivor and would appear to not have ever been used. Because of its age, it has a delicacy that demands it be handled with care. View More...
Elephantine Folio. 43 by 32 cm. [2 pp. illustrated ads], 8 pp., followed by 11 color plates, two of which are two paged. Excepting the two double paged plates, the plates also have b/w insets of rear views of the gowns being showcased, and on the versos of five of the plates are b/w fashion details and variants. (The other plates are blank on the versos.) One of the plates is an extra plate, not printed with this issue of the Chic Parisien. The American edition of the magazine was issued monthly, with two special supplements per year, issued in March and September. The issue here is one... View More...
N.d. Circa 1820s. 12mo, 5.5 by 4.5 inches, or 14 by 11.5 cm. 100 hand-colored lithograph costume plates, all immaculate. Leaves are printed only on one side, and the plates resemble stylish costume cards. This book is usually found with only black and white plates. Other than minor toning along the edges, the thick paper looks virtually new. All is bound in a lush modern reddish-orange morocco, with gilt and incised decoration on both the boards and spine. The gilt figures incorporate the shape of the fleur-de-lys and come off both tastefully simple and elegant. The leather has a par... View More...
32mo, 8 by 6 cm. 120 pp. The French equivalent of a rare English miniature -- Alfred Mills "Costumes of All Nations". Woodcut plates are simple and even naive but tend to depict people in some kind of activity. Thus there is the free black man making his slave climb a tree, a young "negress" playing ouri, Congolese carrying their cheif on a chaise, South Sea natives in mourning, etc. Leather is heavily rubbed. Cloth boards with scuffs and abrasions. Light occasional foxing and other minor soiling. Some leaves with minor corner creases. View More...
N.d., circa 1840. Folio, 48 hand-colored lithographed plates, some heightened in gilt, all mounted on card, as originally issued. Each accompanied by brief caption relating to authorities upon which illustration was based, and this caption is on separate leaf's verso, and there is a tissue guard sheet between this and the related plate. Title page with lovely hand-colored floral border. Followed by list of subscribers, which contains 171 names, and this must surely have been the extent of the entire issue since copies are extremely scarce. (Obviously the book has been mined many times as ... View More...
Leporello with 30 hand-colored images of Vatican costume, in addition to title with lovely colored decoration and cameo portrait of Gregorio XVI, which also helps date this as 1846 or earlier. The last leaf is pasted to a folder, which in this case has a distinctive faux burled wood (walnut-like) finish. The imagery is sharp, bright and clean. Some wear to the joints of the outer folder. View More...
N.d., circa 1840. Large paper version: folio, 34 by 23.5 cm. With 62 hand-colored costume plates, plus engraved title page with hand-colored vignette and dedication page with hand-colored portrait of Pope Pio IX. These images of Vatican dress, both which cover both ecclessiastic and military costume, are generally encountered in a far smaller, leporello format, with also fewer images -- typically thirty plates. In this other guise, the target audience were the many tourists who paid a visit to Rome and were enamored with a pocket souvenir. The diminutive leporello assuredly exudes enorm... View More...
Folio, 46 by 35 cm. 16 color plates, 17 leaves in all, printing only on rectos. Fashions from the late 1910s, depicting male fashion from the era. Usually just one or two men in the foreground, but up to four men, sporting the fashions being promoted. The backgrounds have all kinds of upper crust settings and activities going on, and here there can be other men, as well as women, in the illustrations. So the illustrations take us to the beach and seashore, the boathouse, the country club tennis court and golf course, the riding ring, the country house. Men in sports jackets and boaters a... View More...
Album 198 cigarette cards of German folk costume broken down by regions. Wraps with light soiling. A few flattened creases and two minor closed tears to rear of wraps. Interior clean, bright and complete. View More...
27 cards housed in a leather wallet-like bill fold, with the cards illustration women's and children's fashion on one side, with brief text descriptions and price info on the back sides. The bill fold is 13.5 by 8.5 cm, the cards, 12.5 by 7.5 cm each. The illustrations are in black and white. The fashions are numbered, so surely the bill fold was given to customers, along with suggested fashions for them. As a promotional tool, this was a variant on the typical catalogue, allowing for more customization. Its interest lies both in the fashion illustrations and the relative uniqueness of th... View More...
Folio-sized trade catalogue. 39 by 29 cm. Unpaginated. 40 pp., plus inside of card covers with content. Large color plates of mostly men's fashion, with some stylish women in their company, for the Town & Country set. In each of these plates is a backdrop inset depicting glamorous sporting and other cosmopolitan activities, many in New York, such as the idealized men and women might actively enjoy. So there are images of the Rockefeller Center skating rink, a private plane, an ocean liner, the Yale campus, college football, the downtown New York skyline, horseback riding in Central Park, ... View More...
Folio-sized trade catalogue. 39 by 29 cm. Unpaginated. 42 pp. Large color plates of mostly men's fashion, with some stylish women in their company, for the Town & Country set. In each of these there is a backdrop bespeaking the glamorous lifestyle: a-deck a yacht, at the horse races, at an idyllic college campus, at the country club, at a fabulous pool. The fashions are late thirties, with fabulous men's suits that are perhaps a little freer and more casual than a year or two earlier, as ladies' dress hems are moving up towards the knee. In the back there are suggestions for formal at... View More...
N.d., circa 1920. 4to. 32 by 24 cm. No title, as it was probably issued. Unpaginated, 22 pp., all with hand-colored illustrations of women's dress, hair-styles, etc. from 1600 to the late 1800s. This would appear a reprint, in a smaller format, of part of a work by H. Rouit, and perhaps this was issued privately, or by a non-publishing commercial concern. While the rendering of women's faces is undistinguished, the colors used in some of the garments are lushly rich, and as a visual survey of the three centuries, it is exemplary. View More...
N.d., circa 1860. Oblong, 14 by 24.5 cm. On one side is an illustration of seven boys sporting the company's high fashion of the moment, and the other side is info about the company and the offer to prospective customers to take the clothing on trial. Back to the illustration, the boys have the faces of Greek statuary, which represented an ideal of masculine beauty at the time, and hair of luxuriant wavy locks. Their pants taper down to tiny shoes -- the boys almost could be mistaken for having bound feet like upper crust Chinese women. The clothes on offer include a tunic suit, an invern... View More...
8vo. 19 by 12 cm. 168 hand-colored copper engraved plates of Austrian military uniforms of all kinds -- infantry, cavalry, etc. -- from the eighteenth century, followed by 27 page register. Scarce -- only institutional copies found at Herzogin Anna Amalia, Coburg, BNF and Brown. View More...
32mo. 10 by 6 cm. 100 pp. With 29 illustrated plates, 17 of which are grouped preliminarily and cover the extravagant ladies' hair styles of the day, the remainder spaced in the first half the text and generally carrying two oval vignette portraits on each one. Preserved, besides the original stiff card boards and probably the original endpapers is the decorative slipcase with its wallpaper pattern-like design. Light to moderate edgewear on the slipcase. View More...
Wigs and toupees. Wigs with elaborate knots, coils, braids and waves, and many variants of the Pompadour. Styles with names such as "En-Tout-Cas", the "Duchess", or a name we find amusing, the "Ventilated Pompadour". Featuring hair goods for "colored people", and also such products as invisble hair nets, sanitary rolls, combs and hair beauty products of a wide variety. 12mo. 17.5 by 12.5 cm. 64, [2] pp., plus wraps, with content on both inside covers. Only two institutional holdings -- Univ. of Delaware and Ohio Historical Connection -- show up on OCLC First Search. View More...
4to. 28.5 by 22.5 cm. 20 pp., followed by XX (20) plates, plus content on wraps. Plates show an astonishing variety of hat designs for both men's and women's hats, and this applies even within general hat types. As an example, there are at least two dozen hats that might today be considered derbies. Also depicted are hat boxes, among them ones that have a novelty element. View More...
