Pro Lisu i Kolobok. Russkaia skazka [About the Fox and the Runaway Bun: A Russian Fairy Tale].; Detskaia biblioteka [Children's Library] by [Various]

Paris: J. Povolozky, [1921?]. Octavo (18.5 × 13.5 cm). Original decorative wrappers pasted over blind self-wrappers (as issued); 8 pp. Wrappers illustrated with a pochoir pattern (black and silver dots on yellow stock). Numerous small vignettes in the text. Very good. Russian fairy tale printed for children of Russian émigrés in France, with illustrations by the ten-year-old Zhenya Kovarskaya, the daughter of Ilya Kovarskii and Lidiia Kovarskaia, an editor-and-publisher duo which had left Soviet Russia in 1919 and maintained a lending library in Paris as well as organizing various cultural events. The same text was issued in several wrapper variants, each decorated by hand using different patterns, most likely using the pochoir technique. Approximately ten different variants have been identified; it is possible that there were more. The present variant is one we have not previously encountered. Given small irregularities, it appears likely that this work was also carried out by children. The publisher, J. Povolozky, ran a gallery in Paris in the 1920s and was known for his collaboration with Russian avant-garde artists Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. KVK, OCLC show copies (one each) at NYPL, Princeton, Stanford, and UNC Chapel Hill, without specifying which of the wrapper variants are held. Not at the Russian State or National Library. Not in Savine.