Ink & Blood. A Book of Drawings
Arthur Szyk. New York, Heritage Press,1946.

14], 18, [3] pp. + 4 color plates and 70 monochrome plates. Also with a color frontispiece depicting Szyk at work. With a prefatory text by Struthers Burt. 12¼x9, original morocco, top edge gilt, spine gilt-lettered; original batik-printed board slipcase. One of 1000 inscribed and signed copies.

This copy inscribed for Byron Nishkian. Important post-Holocaust drawings by Szyk. As Burt wrote in the introduction: “This book…these cartoons, the words that accompany them…have a much deeper purpose than to deride and reveal our recent enemies”…”this is NOT A WAR-BOOK, although most of the cartoons were drawn in the time of war. This is a PEACE-BOOK; a book for the parlous years that follow upon war…”

Anatomy of an Antiquarian Bookseller
Ronald Searle. Colour offset lithograph, one of 50 copies printed on handmade paper and signed and dated in pencil by the artist, framed and glazed, c.710 x 520mm., 1976.

B-A Note: This is wonderful! I hope I can track down a print or copy, at least, for my wall - since this original is a little outside my discretionary spending fund.

Views of ancient monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan
Frederick Catherwood. London, 1844.

“Before Indiana Jones stirred our imagination about lost civilizations and their treasures, there were Frederick Catherwood and John Lloyd Stephens, whose explorations of the Maya ruins of Central America, Chiapas, and the Yucatan excited the Anglo-American world in the middle of the 19th century and helped spur the rediscovery of the Maya among the non–romance language nations. And it was Catherwood’s illustrations that fixed forever what the temples and other buildings looked like to the Victorian-era and later visitors to the area. “

B-A Note: This belongs more in an art or illustration blog, perhaps. The illustrations have been expertly bound into a single volume. I recommend clicking through to the website for several beautiful illustrations, if you have an interest in ancient Central American history and architecture.

Here’s one plate:

book-aesthete:

Tenebrous: An Interview with Santiago Caruso

New up at Book-Aesthete: Contemporary: An interview with literary illustrator/artist Santiago Caruso. Above is his amazing artwork for the cover of The Master in Café Morphine: An Homage to Mikhail Bulgakov.