Very scarce with the wrapper

Craig, Edward Gordon ~ Nothing, Or the Bookplate : The Signed Limited Edition With The Scarce Wrapper

Chatto & Windus, London : 1924 : First UK Printing : Signed Limited Edition

The First UK printing published by Chatto & Windus, London in 1924. The SIGNED, LIMITED EDITION, no. ‘247' of 280 ( of which only 250 were for sale) ; signed in pencil by Craig on the ex libris of Jan C. de Vos, “a cut pulled by hand from the original wood”. 4to, [x], 26, [1], [1 blank] + 50 tipped-in bookplates (26 coloured), preceded by the signed 'de Vos' bookplate (slightly toned). The BOOK is in near Fine condition. Original red buckram, lettered and decorated with gilt. Leading and bottom edges untrimmed. A few light spots, light wave to text block, else, clean and bright. In the rarely encountered original buff wrapper which is in Very Good++ condition, lettered and decorated in red: spine lightly toned and rubbed, lightly toned and nicked, some tape repair to the verso of the spine ends and corners. Unusual in the wrapper. (Fletcher & Rood, A29a). The ordinary trade edition of this book, first published later in 1925, only contained 26 plates. A smart copy, in the scarce original wrapper, of the handsome limited edition of Edward Gordon Craig’s 'Nothing, Or the Bookplate', a selection and celebration of his ex libris designs (“they are my old friends”), many created for family and friends (as well as a number for himself), including designs for his mother, Ellen Terry, his sister, Edy Craig, her partner, the critic and author Christopher St. John, as well as the dancer, Isadora Duncan (with whom he had two children), the stage actor, ‘chromatologist,’ and pioneer in lighting design, Beatrice Irwin, and artist and (tarot) illustrator, Pamela Coleman Smith. The collection offers a who’s who of the experimental and radical fringes of the fin de siècle British theatrical world: the “better Theatre [...Craig] wanted to fight for” as a younger man, partly supported, he tells us here, by the modest income (£2 a week) earned by designing bookplates. Between 1895 to 1912 Craig designed 122 bookplates, including an ex libris for the librarian Belle da Costa Greene (not collected here, sadly). Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966) was a British theatre director and designer, and illustrator, who “had as natural a gift for wood-engraving as he had for acting” (ODNB). His “earliest wood-engraving was a portrait of the poet Walt Whitman (1893), taken from a photograph. This was a revolutionary work, one of the earliest ‘white line’ wood-engravings of the modern era” (ibid). [ref: 3324]. Very elusive with the wrapper in such collectible condition.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good++