New Acquisitions
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
Welcome to our New Acquisitions list for October 2019, with over 200 items: books, photographs, maps, manuscripts and ephemera.
Among the highlights are a number of 1st edition works by Australian children’s illustrator Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, including the de luxe edition of The Enchanted Forest (1921); a scarce 19th century Hong Kong imprint, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (1867), which is a guide to the Far East for westerners containing several important maps; an intriguing manuscript note by expatriate Adelaide artist Mortimer Menpes; a complete set of the prestigious journal The Art-Union (1839-1848), containing an original Fox Talbot calotype photograph; two significant 1860s photographs of Australian Indigenous subjects, taken in southwest Western Australia and on the Murray River in northern Victoria, and a quirky and obscure work by Sydney illustrator Charles Turner, Zoology and Things (1883).
Happy browsing!
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# 23352
TURNER, Charles
Zoology and things
/ by Charles Turner. Illustrated by the author. Sydney : Gordon & Gotch, [1883]. Colophon: John Sands, Printer, George Street, Sydney. Small square octavo (150 x 125 mm), original pictorial card covers (paper loss to spine, else near fine), lower wrapper with several of Gordon & Gotch’s specially produced illustrated labels promoting this work pasted …
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# 23336
[WASHBOURNE, Thomas Jetson, 1832-1905]
Maggie Stone, granddaughter of Queen Mary of the Wolgalu (Monaro district, southern New South Wales). Photographed in the Tangambalanga district near the Murray River, northeast Victoria, circa 1869.
Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 104 x 64 mm (mount); no photographer’s imprint (verso blank); a strong print with good tonal range and clarity. One of a seres of indigenous portraits taken in northeast Victoria around 1869 by travelling photographer Thomas J. Washbourne. These portraits were probably taken on the Aboriginal reserve at Tangambalanga …
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# 23247
Queensland Government Intelligence and Tourist Bureau.
The pocket Brisbane
compiled and issued by the Queensland Government Intelligence and Tourist Bureau, Corner of Queen and George Streets, Brisbane. Brisbane : The Queensland Intelligence and Tourist Bureau, [1921]. “New edition”. Octavo, original pictorial wrappers (mild edge and corner wear), the upper wrapper with a view of the city from the interior of a tram, the lower wrapper …
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# 23156
MAYERS, William Frederick; DENNYS, Nicholas Belfield; KING, Charles
The Treaty Ports of China and Japan.
A complete guide to the open ports of those countries, together with Peking, Yedo, Hongkong and Macao : forming a guide book & vade mecum for travellers, merchants, and residents in general : with 29 maps and plans. London : Trübner and Co. ; Hongkong : A. Shortrede and Co, 1867. First edition. Octavo, half morocco …
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# 23313
TAYLOR, J.T.E.; MOREHEAD, R.A.A.
Letter from a mining surveyor reporting on the Bon Accord copper mine at Burra, South Australia. June, 1848.
Manuscript in ink on laid paper, bifolium, [1 1/2] pp, foolscap folio (320 x 200 mm), headed “Bon Accord” Mine, 1st June 1848; signed at foot J.T.E. Taylor; outer side with address panel addressed to R.A.A. Morehead Esq., Scottish Australian Investment Co., O’Connell Street, Sydney; endorsed by the sender loose letter and per Juno, with …
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# 23258
[MANNING & KNIGHT, attributed]
Noongar men, southwest Western Australia, circa 1868.
Albumen print photograph, 59 x 82 mm, laid down on a piece cut from a 19th century album page, contemporary caption in pencil beneath image: ‘Australian Natives armed with boomerangs’; the print is slightly faded but otherwise is in very good condition. The attribution to the Perth-based photographic partnership of Manning & Knight is based …
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# 23328
MENPES, Mortimer Luddington (1855-1938)
Mortimer Menpes, Adelaide-born British artist : autograph note, signed, revealing his romantic feelings towards a young woman, possibly Australian socialite Pearl Faithfull. London, circa 1899.
Manuscript in ink on [2] pp of an octavo bifolium (180 x 110 mm), on embossed letterhead with Menpes’ Chelsea address ’25 Cadogan Gardens, S.W.’ (this residence, which Menpes had designed by the architect Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and which was spectacularly decorated in the Japanese style, was completed in 1888, and Menpes and his family …
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# 23263
Photographer unknown.
[CHINESE IN AUSTRALIA] Vegetable “John”, Brisbane.
[Between 1900 and 1910]. Photographic glass magic lantern slide, 82 x 82 mm, paper border with contemporary manuscript caption in ink ‘Vegetable “John” / Brisbane’ and sequence number ‘6’; in fine condition. The term “Vegetable John” appears to have been a generic sobriquet applied by white Australians to Chinese market gardeners and fruit and vegetable …
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# 23351
GAIR MANUFACTURING CO. (MELBOURNE)
Price list from Gair’s Melbourne, 1938. Canvas goods manufacturers & warehousemen.
[Cover title]. Melbourne : Pelzer & Lee (printers), for Gair Manufacturing Co. Pty. Ltd., March 1938. “Price list no. 525”. Quarto (283 x 215 mm), original pictorial wrappers (very light vertical fold), 36 pp, line-drawn illustrations throught, a fine example. A superb pre-war Melbourne trade catalogue for Gair’s Manufacturing Co., offering a huge variety of …
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# 12502
THOMAS HALL
Copper token for Thomas Hall, taxidermist, London, 1795
London : Thomas Hall, 1795. Æ halfpenny, diameter 30 mm, weight 12 grams. Obverse: Three quadrupeds. THE KANGUROO . THE ARMADILLO . THE RHINOCEROS. Reverse: T. HALL CITY ROAD NEAR FINSBURY SQUARE LONDON 1795 / THE FIRST ARTIST IN EUROPE FOR PRESERVING BIRDS BEASTS &c. Dark brown patina with reddish highlights and excellent detail; a …
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# 23050
OUTHWAITE, Ida Rentoul.
Fairyland of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Verses by Annie R. Rentoul. Stories by Grenbry Outhwaite and Annie R. Rentoul. Melbourne : Ramsay Publishing, 1926. Folio, gilt-lettered cloth (edge wear, loss to head and foot of spine), illustrated endpapers, 166 pp, 50 tipped-in colour and black and white plates (light foxing to a few plates). Limited to 1000 copies, signed and numbered …
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# 23175
RENTOUL, Annie R. and OUTHWAITE, Ida Rentoul.
The little green road to Fairyland (deluxe edition)
London: A. & C. Black, 1922. Quarto, decorated white buckram (lightly marked), 103 pp., 8 colour and 8 black and white plates, light foxing to preliminaries. The deluxe issue of the first edition, limited to 300 numbered copies, LACKING the first leaf (pp. i-ii) which has the printed limitation statement. One of the classic illustrated …
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# 23176
RENTOUL, Annie R. and OUTHWAITE, Ida Rentoul.
The little green road to Fairyland.
London: A. & C. Black, 1922. Quarto, patterned boards with paper title label, in the very rare illustrated dustjacket (chip to head of spine), 103 pp., 8 colour and 8 black and white plates, previous owner’s name to half title, some light foxing to edges. One of the classic illustrated Outhwaite titles, published in large …
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# 23174
OUTHWAITE, Ida Rentoul.
Blossom : a fairy story.
London : A & C. Black, 1928. Quarto, papered boards, cloth spine, in the very rare illustrated dusatjacket (a couple of small chips to spine), pp. 94, gift inscription to endpaper (to Joyce, with love from two dinkum little Aussies, Bruce & Joyce Jones, May 1929), eight colour and eight black and white plates, internally …
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# 23178
[DASKEIN] QUIN, Tarella.
Gum Tree Brownie and other Faerie Folk of the Never-Never.
Gum Tree Brownie and other Faerie Folk of the Never-Never. Illustrated by Ida S. Rentoul. Melbourne: George Robertson [1910]. Second edition. Oblong quarto, illustrated orange cloth (marked and rubbed), 184 pp., inscriptions to endpaper, foreword by Ethel Turner, illustrated throughout, internally clean. The third book illustrated by Ida Rentoul, first published in 1907 (a third …
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# 23177
OUTHWAITE, Ida Rentoul and OUTHWAITE, Grenby.
The little fairy sister.
London: A. & C. Black, 1923. First edition. Quarto, patterned cloth, edges lightly rubbed, 91 pp., previous owner’s name to half-title, colour and black and white plates, light occasional foxing, a very good copy. The scarce first edition. Muir 5598.