The Amphora

I've always been rather fond of amphorae. They have a very pleasing shape and were extremely useful in the Ancient world, holding everything from grain to olive oil to wine. Amphorae are easily carried and easily stored. They're the perfect melding of form and function.

So it's rather interesting that Thomas Bird Mosher, publisher of The Bibelot and other limited edition volumes, decided to call one of his volumes of prose and verse Amphora and to include a proem by Leigh Hunt comparing a book to an amphora. Mosher then writes a lengthier foreward in which he amplifies Hunt's book = amphora theme, saying: " My aim has been, and is, to print only those things informed by the spirit of beauty - the soul of books - not hackneyed, by reason of constant use or display. If the book has any demonstrable raison d'etre it is more especially that I have got out of the beaten highway and wandered into bypaths, seeking for fine flowers of the forest rather floral displays of the classical literary garden." And I think that's a good ideal for anyone compiling a collection of verse and prose. Within Amphora we find the known and the unkown ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, George du Maurier and Thomas Carlylse make their appearances, as we might expect (but even these appearances are not the usual things we've read in other volumes!), but then there are wonderful and thoroughly unexpected appearances by Dorothy Wordsworth, E.F. Benson, George Gissing, J.A. McNeil Whistler and Arthur Machen. All in all, a very delightful volumes, still rtaining it's plain paper dustjacket and the cardboard slipcover. The endpapers are beautiful, a swirly light blue and white, too! Amphora once again shows that Thomas B. Mosher was not only a master book-creator, but a master editor.

Amphora, Thomas B. Mosher, publisher, 1912, one of 925.

Earlier in the week I received another Mosher book.

Proverbs in Porcelain by Austin Dobson, Thomas Mosher, publisher, 1909, number 35 of 100 copies printed on Japan vellum.

When I first began collecting Mosher books, I began with writers I was familiar with and enjoyed: William Morris, Walter Pater, Algernon Charles Swinburne &c. Once I realized how small each edition was, usually 100 or 925 copies, I began picking Mosher books up whenever I could, nevermind who the author was. This volume is case in point because I have no idea who Austin Dobson was or what he wrote.

Ther is an implicit trust one puts on a publisher, especially on a publisher such as Mosher who had a descerning literary eye. If I can trust him with William Morris and Walter Pater, I can trust him with someone like Austin Dobson. So while I am stepping off a literary cliff, the safety net of Mosher is present.

Dobson is clearly enamored of the 18th Century, especially that period in France of the 1750s, before the Revolution, that delightful, mythical Roccoco era of Fragonard and Watteau with their charming, aristocratic shepherds and shepherdesses flirting in bucolic landscapes, beneath trees that resemble overgrown broccoli. So in this volumes we have charming scenes of flirtations and romance between a Countesses and Viscounts, witty dialogues between Abbes and Marquis and flirtations between charming servants. It's pretty without being sickly or over done.

Also this week I received the two volume set of The Well at the World's End by William Morris. These are paperbacks from 1970 and in remarkably good condition.

Hollywood in Vintage Postcards, Rod kennedy, Jr. and Elizabeth Ellis, 2003, Gibbs Smith Publisher, First Edition. I collect old postcards from the 1900s through the early 1950s, primarily of Los Angeles and Hollywood, so this book immediately appealed to me. The book avoids the cliched images while it covers all the necessary landmarks: the film studios, the homes of the stars, the night spots, the orange groves (yes, there were orange groves in California once. Now that land is suburbs and ex-urbs and shopping malls) and other places. I have some of these cards in my collection and I've discovered some images I would like to have in my collection. These types of books are informative, but also dangerous!

Devoted Readers will remember a post from a week ago in which I mentioned salivating over a 1907 edition of a Harrison Fisher book. I'm drooling no more since I went back and purchased it.

Now, I'd seen this book back in that late fall, around Christmas time and I thought "Well, that won't be there the next time I'm in." After Christmas I was back and the book was still there! Last weekend I was back and the book was still there! By mid-week I decided that I was being sent a signal from the Great Bibliophile and that I should put the book on hold and purchase it this weekend. Which I did.

The Harrison Fisher Book, 1907, Charles Scribners & Sons.

While Charles Dana Gibson may have blazed the trail with his illustrations of the Modern American Woman (we know and adore her as the Gibson Girl) in the late 1890s, it was Harrison Fisher who really popularized the look and the style of Modern American Woman of the pre-World War One era by simply being everywhere ... Fisher illustrated books, magazine articles and appeared on magazine covers. He was incredibly popular and his work is highly sought after.

Unlike the drawings of Gibson, whose women were rather aloof and unapproachable, the women in Fisher's illustrations are at once refined, fashionable, Modern and approachable. You felt could go canoeing or bicycling, play tennis or golf, or ... daringly ... introduce yourself on the street with one of Fisher's women, whereas one was simply allowed to worship at the altar of the Gibson Girl, but not to approach. This was the key to Fisher's success. Plus, he's a damned good illustrator, capturing the mood and moment perfectly.

The Harrison Fisher Book is a compilation of illustrations he did for Scribners, who were a huge publishing enterprise in the early 1900s. So among his illustrations for books we have scenes from "Jane Cable" and "Black Friday," illustrations for articles and short stories from Scribner's magazine and incidental illustrations and sketches. It's a beautiful book! It's also hard to find a book of Fisher's that's completely in tact ... people would cut the books up to frame certain illustrations or to paste into scrapbooks.

The sun is shining for a change and I believe I shall go out on my bicycle this afternoon!