Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

10 volumes, folio (398 x 279 mm). 9 color frontispieces printed on silk and matted, 30 hand-colored albumen photographs by Tamamura Kozaburo mounted with printed tissue guards, numerous halftone photographic illustrations. (Frontispiece in vol. V detached but present, some mattings to illustrations damaged, some offsetting, very light spotting throughout.) Original silk printed in color and gilt over boards in varying Japanese-inspired motifs with silk ties, original stab-sewing, uncut and unopened (sunning to spines and extremities, some slight fraying, minor soiling, endpapers on numerous volumes creased from folding.)

LIMITED EDITION, letter V of 25 lettered copies of the "Shogun Edition," CONTAINING 14 ILLUSTRATIONS SIGNED BY THEIR ARTISTS. Brinkley's monumental work describing Japanese history and culture features chapters discussing architecture, cities, festivals, religion, and the country's relationship with the rest of the world. Tamamura Kozaburo exported "40,000 photographs of various sizes to the Boston publishing house J. B. Millet. These were required for insertion in the work Japan.... But this was only the first instalment [sic] of what turned out to be an enormous order for more than one million(!) hand-colored albumen photographs. Tamamura used over 350 assistants over several months to help with the printing and coloring" (Bennett, Photography in Japan 1853-1912, p. 202).

[With]: BRINKLEY. The Art of Japan. Boston: The J.B. Millet Company, 1901. 2 volumes, folio (398 x 279 mm). 2 color frontispieces printed on silk and matted, 16 color illustrations mounted with printed tissue guards (offsetting, minor holing throughout, marginal chipping and losses to some mats, preliminary pages creased from folding). Original silk printed in color and gilt over boards in varying Japanese-inspired motifs with silk ties, original stab-sewing, uncut and unopened (sunning to spines and extremities, some slight fraying, minor soiling, endpapers on numerous volumes creased from folding.) LIMITED EDITION, letter V of 25 lettered copies printed as companion editions to the earlier Japan Described and Illustrated by the Japanese editions printed in 1897-98. CONTAINING 6 ILLUSTRATIONS SIGNED BY THEIR ARTISTS.