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Notes of a dirty old man (with original Bukowski drawing)

San Francisco : City Lights Bookshop, 1973 (first published in 1969). Octavo, illustrated wrappers, pp. 255. With an original pen and ink drawing by Bukowski (signed BUK) opposite the title page, of the author lying in bed, drinking and smoking, surrounded by beer cans and what appears to be a…

Salome

A tragedy in one act: translated from the French of Oscar Wilde, with sixteen drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. London : John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd, 1930. Quarto, gilt-illustrated cloth (spine slightly sunned), bookplate to endpaper, pp. xvii; [4]; 67, black and white plates by Beardsley. A fine copy.

Betts’s new map of the world, neatly dissected

London : John Betts, c. 1850. Cedar box with sliding lid featuring an engraved vignette with people and animals from the four great continents, printed advertisement for Betts’s ‘Instructive juvenile games’ on underside, containing the engraved map ‘Betts’s school atlas of the world on Mercator’s projection’, measuring 295 x 450mm,…

The Southern Skies Orrery

A handmade working orrery by master instrument maker Brian Greig, Melbourne, circa 1991, based on a design by W. S. Jones, London, early 19th century. Melbourne : Souther Skies, circa 1991. Ebonised timber stand on three turned wooden legs, engraved circular zodiac plate, model spheres of the sun and the…

[MAPS] 万国地誌略諳射訳図 (萬國地誌略諳射譯圖)(萬國地誌畧諳射譯圖) [Bankoku Chishiryaku Ansha Yakuzu]

Complete set of 6 copperplate engraved maps with hand colouring. Maps 1-4 published by 岡安慶介 (Okayasu Keisuke) [1878] (Meiji 11); Maps 5 & 6 published by 桑原伊之助 (Kuwabara Inosuke) [1880] (Meiji 13). 1. Asia, the Middle East, and Russia east of the Urals (340 x 400 mm); 2. Africa (310 x…

Untitled (circa 1987)

An unique sculpture of typical organic composition by pioneer Australian environmental artist John Davis. Painted canvas cloth over wooden sticks, 220m (h) x 300 mm (w) x 80 mm (d). ‘At the time of his death in 1999, John Davis had established a critically acclaimed reputation as an influential sculptor…

Tableau des decouvertes du Capne. Cook & de la Perouse

Paris : chez l’auteur, rue Coqueron Mon. de France ; Bordeaux : chez le Cne. S. Sauveur sous le peristyle de la Grande Comedie, l’an 7 de la Republique Francaise [1798 or 1799]. Aquatint with hand colouring, 430 x 534 mm (sheet), old mount burn to margins, a very good…

The Wendy Calendar by Arthur Rackham

London : Hodder & Stoughton [1911]. Thick card envelope (284 x 367 mm, some stains and edge wear), printed title and tipped-on colour plate by Rackham, containing The Wendy Calendar, consisting of six cards printed in colour, each card with a pasted on colour plate by Rackham and a small…

Fairy standing in a rose petal boat

Watercolour on card, 147 x 102 mm, signed lower right. Dorothea Francis was a talented artist working in watercolour and oils in Melbourne in the mid twentieth century. She studied first with Isabel NanKivell and then Catherine Hardess (a Slade graduate), and later at the George Bell School in the…