Rare books from Downtown Brown Books, ABAA

New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2006. Four fragments of a large, shattered Chinese vase, each initialled "Y.O." and dated " '06", from a performance of Yoko Ono's fluxus work, Promise Piece (first performed at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre, London, 1966, and included in Grapefruit). This variation concluded the memorial for Korean American video artist Nam June Paik held at the Guggenheim Museum on April 26, 2006. The event was described by Michael Wilson on the Art Forum website (Chance Encounters, April 29, 2006, https://dtbbks.com/ono): "After two helpers in head-to-toe black and ninja masks had carried a large canvas of a vase to the front of the stage and unrolled a canvas bag heavy with ceramic fragments, Ono walked on and took a seat. A soundtrack of birdsong faded out and, after a burst of dissonant song, she announced: 'The vase has been broken into 450 pieces. Take one home and promise to think of Nam June.' She took out her knitting (I'm not making this up), and the crowd began to mass… Read More

Berlin: Maurerschen Buchhandlung, 1822. First Edition. Very good. Heine's first book, a collection of poems published by a Berlin bookstore in December 1821 (but dated on the title page 1822). A scarce book by one of the most important 19th century German poets. viii, 170, [1] pages. Collating as: [i] title, [ii] blank, [iii-iv] Zueignung, [v-viii] Inhalt, [1]-35, Traumbilder, [36] blank, [37]-64, Minnelieder, [65]-103, Romanzen, [104] blank, [105]-142, Sonette und vermischte Gedichte, [143]-170, Uebersetzungen aus Lord Byrons Werken, 170, printer's imprint: Berlin, gedruckt bei G. Hayn, [171] Berichtigung. First edition (first printing). A very good or better copy in contemporary marbled paper-covered boards. With a red-paper label on the spine, which is divided into compartments with four ornaments stamped in gilt. Label edge chipped just touching the H in Heine. Minor wear to the corners. Previous owner's name on the first blank. A bit musty.

New York: (n.p.), 1872. On November 5, 1872, 440,738 New Yorkers went into the voting booth to express a preference for Ulysses S. Grant over Horace Greeley. Under the American political system they were technically selecting voters in the Electoral College, including Frederick Douglass and thirty-four other men on the Republican party slate. This is a very rare printed ticket listing the electors. The sheet is just 2-7/8 by 3-1/2 inches, and few (if any) other copies survive. Douglass was honored by his selection to the college and of having his name first on the list. This was a recognition of the importance of the Black vote to the Republicans in a narrowly divided country. After the New York electors voted for Grant, they selected Douglass to present the results to the Senate for the official tally of votes. Douglass writes about this in his 1881 autobiography: "The Republicans of [New York], not having the fear of popular prejudice before their eyes, placed my name as an elector at large at… Read More

México [Mexico City]: En la officina de D. Mariano de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1806. First Edition. A Mexican edition of a history of the Haitian revolution, written from the perspective of the French, who were ousted from the island following a particularly brutal and bloody conflict. The book is predictably critical of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a leader of the revolution and the first ruler of independent Haiti, who ordered the execution of most of the remaining white residents of the country after the war. The book was quickly translated into several European languages, including Spanish, as a warning to other colonial powers. Juan Lopez Cancelada, a Spaniard who at the time was editing the Mexican periodical, La Gazeta, financed this Mexican edition. Cancelada commissioned two Mexican artists, José Simón de Larrea (who signs his work "Rea" in this book) and Manuel Lopez Lopez, to produce the engravings for which this edition is known. The ten plates, including a frontispiece, are expressive and… Read More

London: Herbert Jenkins, 1936. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Good. The author's first book as Ryan (and second novel overall, after Tyranny of Virtue by "Noel Despard"). The novel, with its dreamlike third-person narration, explores the idea of justifiable homicide and the sexual mores of the 1920s. A contemporary review described the book: "The Right to Kill is more of a problem than a detective story, but the situation it present-that of a detective who when sent to investigate a crime finds that it involves a former mistress and his own illegitimate daughter-is developed with skill and ingenuity" (quoted from the Liverpool Daily Post, July 1, 1936). Ryan's many books mostly drifted into obscurity until the 1980s when genre fiction critics began to rediscover him. First edition (states "First published 1936" on the copyright page, with no indication of later printings). A very good copy in the publisher's orange cloth-covered boards (hardcover). This copy is one of the few surviving copies… Read More

Chemnitz, Germany: Grossdruckerei Pickenhahn, 1939. Ephemera. Very good. A poster for the most notorious art show in history, the Entartete Kunst Ausstellung (Degenerate Art Exhibition) organized by Joseph Goebbels in 1937 as a public denunciation of modern art by the Nazis. After an opening exhibition in Munich, the show toured Germany. This poster is for the Chemnitz showing, August 11 to September 10, 1939. In all, perhaps a million Germans saw the exhibition, and one wonders how many went to mock the art and how many went to see the largest exhibition of modern art ever held in Germany to that time. Many hundreds of works were presented, culled primarily from German museums, with the prices paid noted on the captions as a way to attack the alleged profligate spending of public institutions. While the show had a decidedly anti-Semitic attitude, in fact relatively few of the artists displayed were Jewish. The poster, a three-color lithograph (yellow-orange, green, and dark brown), measures… Read More

New York: The Blindman, 1917. Good. The rare poster for the most significant American Dada event, a party for The Blind Man, a short-lived (two issues) literary and arts journal co-founded by the French painter Marcel Duchamp and the American artist Beatrice Wood; published by the French novelist Henri-Pierre Roché, the author of the novel Jules et Jim; and edited by the artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Mina Loy contributed to both issues. The poster measures 10 by 27-5/8 inches. Lithographed, with letterpress, in red and blue on pink paper. The Blindman's Ball, as a Dada event, had rules-or "Axioms du Bal" (according to the ad in the first issue of the journal)-the dance would go on all night ("The Blind Man must see the sun") and "romantic rags are requested." The axioms concluded with the admonition "There is a difference between a tuxedo and a Turk and guests not in costume must sit in bought-and-paid-for boxes." Beatrice Wood designed the poster and its central figure, described by… Read More

Boston: Published in Aid of the Festival and Bazaar, December 13-19, 1886. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. The first edition of the first American woman's suffrage movement cookbook, printed for sale during the woman suffrage bazaar held in Boston on six days in 1886. Harriet "Hattie" Burr, who was active in suffrage and other community causes, in Boston compiled recipes and household advice from more than 150 supporters of the suffrage cause in New England and beyond. As she writes in her preface, "Among the contributors are many who are eminent in their professions as teachers, lecturers, physicians, ministers, and authors,-whose names are household words in the land. A book with so unique and notable a list of contributors, vouched for by such undoubted authority, has never before been given to the public." Among the authors are the poet Julia Ward Howe, the activist Lucy Stone, the writer Mary A. Livermore, Mary J. Safford (the first female gynecologist), and Marie E. Zakrzewska (founder… Read More

Detroit: Randall, Photographer, 1881. Ephemera. Very good. A full-length cabinet card portrait of Sojourner Truth with the caption, "I sell the shadow to support the substance." This is one of Truth's last portraits, taken when she was in her eighties and purchased in bulk to sell at events, hence the caption. During the Civil War, Truth took the unusual step of acquiring the copyright to her portrait, giving her control over both the distribution of her image and the money it generated. The verso (back) of the mount of this photograph includes Truth's copyright statement. Truth (1797-1883), born Isabella Baumfree, was one of the best-known abolitionists and women's rights advocates of the 19th century. She traveled the country for decades giving talks and attending conferences, selling her photographs-her "shadow"-as a primary means of support. The art professor Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby has published an extensive study of Truth's photographs (Enduring Truths, 2015). Based on Grigsby's research into… Read More

Tokyo: Kyuryudo, 1980. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. The first survey of the work of one of the great bookbinders of the late 20th century, finely bound in full goatskin by the artist, with a geometrical inlay pattern, a leather chemise with laid down fiery marbled paper on the front and back, a slipcase covered in the same fiery marbled paper, an orange cloth covered slipcase, a paulownia wood (similar to balsa) two-part box, and a paper portfolio case with bone closures. In all, this is a spectacular example of fine binding at the highest level of artisanry. This is one of twenty numbered folio-sized, deluxe copies with velvet endpapers and silvered page edges. The book was originally published at Y900,000 (about $9,000 at the time). My World of Bibliophile Binding offers of an illustrated introduction to bookbinding techniques in Japanese (translated by Einen Miura), followed by dozens color images of Miura's custom bindings, captioned in Japanese, with the books' authors and titles in… Read More

Brisbane, CA: Trillium Press, 2005. Fine. The numbered edition (100 copies) of Sandow Birk's Divine Comedy, complete in three volumes, with more than 100 signed lithographs bound in, as issued. The artist translated the text with Marcus Sanders and illustrated it after Gustave Doré's well-known 19th century take on Dante's epic literary masterpiece, divided into the standard three books, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Birk is best-known for his re-imagining of classic works in modern American urban environments, and the Divine Comedy is one of his most important projects. In the lithographs that illustrate the text-more than 200 in total, counting smaller unsigned pieces and the full-page signed prints-he cast Los Angeles as Hell (in the book Inferno), San Francisco as Purgatory (Purgatorio), and New York has Heaven (Paradiso). The lithographs were printed by David Salgado on White Arches Cover paper using a ten-ton Mailänder flatbed proof press. The plates were inked four times and then… Read More

London: William Tweedie, 1860. First Edition. Hardcover. The first book on the Underground Railroad, published only in England while the fabled escape route for enslaved Americans was still active. William Mitchell was the son of an enslaved man and a Native American woman in North Carolina. According to the introduction by W. H. Bonner, a British abolitionist who encouraged Mitchell to write the book during a speaking tour of the United Kingdom, at a young age he was apprenticed to a plantation owner and toiled alongside enslaved workers for many years. The author helped escaped slaves reach Canada from Ohio between 1842 and 1855. The bulk of his book is comprised of anecdotes about people he encountered while working for the railroad, including a formerly enslaved woman who died from frostbite while protecting her three children and a former slave, John Mason, who brought Mitchell "in 19 months, 265 human beings, whom he had been instrumental in redeeming from Slavery." Mitchell recounts Mason's… Read More

[Avalanche Records], 1971. A rare example of original album cover art by one of the legends of the medium. John Van Hamersveld (b. Baltimore, 1941) designed the iconic poster for the surf film Endless Summer while still in art school. As a professional graphic designer he did the album covers for The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St, plus LPs by Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, Blondie, and even Charles Bukowski (Reads His Poetry, 1980). This is an original painting on acetate for the cover of Beans self-titled debut (and only) album for Avalanche Records, a nascent label under United Artists Records. The Day-Glo design is based on Van Hamersveld's character Johnny Face, which appeared on popular headshop posters beginning in 1970. As far as your cataloger can tell, very little of Van Hamersveld's original album cover art is in private hands, making this a rare opportunity to acquire an original piece-one featuring his most… Read More

[Neuilly, France]: Editions Al Manar, 2012. First Edition. Fine. A collection of poems in French translation, illustrated with an original pastel drawing of a tree as the frontispiece (one of 18 such copies). Adnan (1925-2021), a Lebanese American artist and poet, worked on her Série des Arbres, a group of drawings of trees, over many years. Many of the series are done in a single color of ink; this is an atypical example in colors. In recent years, the art world has "discovered" the work of women artists; Adnan is an early example of this trend. She first gained real recognition at Documenta13, in 2012, the year this book was published, when she was in her late eighties. Two years later, she contributed to the Whitney Biennial, and since then, her work has been exhibited around the world. In addition to painting, Adnan wrote poetry in three languages, Arabic, French, and English. The four long poems here were first written in English. This is one of 18 copies of the first edition with an… Read More

Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1978. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/Near fine. One of King's best novels, an apocalyptic book about the near-extinction of the human race. 823 pages. First edition (first printing, a stated "First Edition" and yes, there is the code T39 on page 823, which is not a point of issue, all copies that state "first editions" have that code). Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with the $12.95 price. This is a very nice copy, inscribed by King, "For Barry-hoped you liked this tale of love and horror beyond the end of the world-Stephen King. 4/22/83." This is King's typical good inscription in The Stand and you won't find many nicer copies.