Search Results: Titles starting with F from Honey & Wax Booksellers

New York: New York Times, 1926. Four large original watercolors by George Van Werveke for the New York Times Book Review, published in 1925 and 1926. Headlining the fiction section, Van Werveke's historical scenes provided a counterpoint to the modern American titles reviewed below, offering amusing glimpses of English and French literary history. Each illustration catches a writer at a charged or revealing personal moment. The first, published on May 31, 1925, depicts the seventeenth-century diarist John Evelyn amid the chaos of his trashed house, as he consults with the architect Christopher Wren. The published headline read: "Lusty Monarch Ruins Fair Home of Famous Diarist. After John Evelyn Had Sublet to Peter the Great (During Peter's Visit to England), He Had to Call in Sir Christopher Wren to Repair the Damage." The second, published on January 24, 1926, shows the historian George Grote examining his future wife on the reading he assigned her, while her father stews. The published headline… Read More

England, nineteenth century. Four original silhouette drawings on storybook themes: a turbaned group in Eastern costume with a hookah; an armed highwayman and his target; two figures dueling; and a traveler with pack and pipe. The figures have the look of shadow puppets, perhaps inspired by a magic lantern show. An evocative piece of Victorian ephemera. Four ink and graphite illustrations on paper, mounted to a single backing sheet. Entire sheet matted to 13 x 9.75 inches. Occasional light discoloration to paper, edge of one drawing creased.

San Francisco: Paul Elder & Company, 1910. A quartet of first editions of Mary Joss Jones's Hump Tree Booklets. The stories feature the adventures of the wildlife who live under the protective canopy of the Hump Tree, an old-growth arbor: "all the time through the hot, still air came the song of the Woodland People." The complete series comprised eight tales, bound separately in wrappers as the Hump Tree Booklets, and issued simultaneously in a single volume as The Hump Tree Stories. This bound group of four booklets, series-numbered 8, 3, 2, and 4, respectively, appears to have been issued in this format by the publisher, as evidenced by similar copies that have come to market. Remarkably fresh, near-fine examples of this uncommon children's series from San Francisco bookseller and publisher Paul Elder. Four volumes, measuring 8 x 6.5 inches: [6], 10, [4]; [6], 6, [4]; [6], 9, [1]; [6], 8, [2]. Publisher's color pictorial side-stapled wrappers, spines hole-punched and bound together with linen cord… Read More

Princeton: Creative Playthings, 1972. American edition of this iconic educational toy, graphic designer Fredun Shapur's four-way blocks. Shapur developed the first version of these blocks, featuring four simplified, stylized animals, in 1964. They were awarded the London Design Centre label, and picked up by Naef, the Swiss toy company, for manufacture and distribution in Europe. In 1968, Shapur became art director of the American toy company Creative Playthings, where his vision informed every aspect of the company's image: "Attractive design, high standards of craftsmanship, and well-informed, age-appropriate goods were the qualities that made Creative Playthings an emblem of the 'good toy' as it was understood in the postwar years" (Fredun Shapur: Playing with Design, 61). He developed two new variations on the four-way blocks for Creative Playthings, one featuring wild animals, one farm animals. In the American blocks, the animals are depicted more realistically than in the earlier European… Read More

Zeiningen, Switzerland: Kurt Naef, 1965. Swiss edition of this iconic educational toy, graphic designer Fredun Shapur's four-way blocks. Shapur developed the first version of these blocks, featuring four simplified, stylized animals, in 1964. They were awarded the London Design Centre label, and picked up by Naef, the Swiss toy company, for manufacture and distribution in Europe. In 1972, as art director of the American toy company Creative Playthings, Shapur would develop two more variations on his four-way blocks, slightly smaller in scale. These Naef animal blocks, arranged and rearranged, reveal in turn a blue horse, a black elephant, an orange cat, and a green snake. See Amy Ogata and Mira Shapur, Fredun Shapur: Playing with Design (2013). A high spot of modern graphic design. Six wooden puzzle pieces, screenprinted in four colors, each piece measuring 8.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 inches. "Spiel Naef / Swiss Made" printed at top lefthand corner of cat image. Light shelfwear.