Rare books from Passages Bookshop

Eugene, OR: Terri Warpinski, 2014. First printing. (15) pp., 19 x 13 inches. Fourteen image-and-text broadsides, digitally printed using archival pigments on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper, housed in a custom cloth-covered clamshell box, made by Sandy Tilcock of lone goose press. Numbered and signed by the artists in an edition of twenty copies. As of October 2020, just two copies remain available, the rest having found their way into institutional collections. Liminal Matter: Fences pairs arresting images of the U.S.–Mexico border by photographer Terri Warpinski with responses to the images by poet Laura Winter. Warpinski’s photographs document the physical manifestations of the zone where the two nations meet, while Winter’s poems remind the viewer of the social and psychological impact of the border on the people whose lives are defined and delimited by that line. A second portfolio, Liminal Matter: Traces, was published as a companion volume in 2018, and is also available from Passages Bookshop.

Portland, OR: Artist, 2020. Original work. (40) pp., 5.75 x 10.5 inches. Unique altered book, sewn into card covers collaged with cloth and paper. The latest collage book from Cynthia Lahti, best known for her ceramic and mixed-media sculptures and her drawings. Lahti has repurposed the July 1967 issue of Workers Quarterly, published in Chicago by the Walther League, a Lutheran youth organization, covering all of its surfaces. The book contains 18 double-page spreads, each an independent collage, plus the inner and outer covers. Lahti’s collage books draw their imagery from a wide range of sources, often including books from her own childhood.

Eugene, OR: Terri Warpinski, 2018. Second printing. (17) pp., 19 x 13 inches. Fifteen image-and-text broadsides (plus title page and colophon), digitally printed using archival pigments on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper, housed in a custom cloth-covered clamshell box, made by Sandy Tilcock of lone goose press. Numbered and signed by the artists in a 2020 second printing of five copies, after a first printing of ten copies in 2018. Liminal Matter: Traces pairs arresting images of the U.S.–Mexico border by photographer Terri Warpinski with responses to the images by poet Laura Winter. Traces focuses the viewer’s attention on the people caught in between two nations and those who profit from their plight. Visual and poetic pairings reveal artifacts and other evidence of passage and exclusion, providing insight into the struggles and hope of those in flight. Traces is the companion volume to Liminal Matter: Fences, a first portfolio published in 2014 and also available from Passages Bookshop.

n.p.: n.p., 1930s?. Original work. 16 x 20.5 inches (frame). Original untitled pencil and gouache painting on paper or board, signed in the lower right corner. In very good condition, with no apparent flaws (not examined outside of frame). William Andrew (Willy) Pogany (1882–1955) was a celebrated Hungarian-American illustrator, contemporary of Edmund Dulac and N.C. Wyeth. He is remembered most for his illustrations of myths and fairy tales (both Western and Eastern): The Rubaiyat, Parsifal, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Gulliver's Travels, the Arabian Nights, and so on. This figure, possibly a sketch for a magazine cover or a costume design, was acquired by its current owners directly from the artist’s son.

Boston: John W. Luce & Co., 1905. First printing. 107 pp., 5.25 x 7.75 inches. Cloth over boards, with printed cover and spine labels. Light wear to extremities, and scattered faint marks to cloth; light soiling to cover label, otherwise intact and bright; darkening and edge-chipping to spine label, still quite legible. Internally very good, save for a tape repair to one page (see images). Inscribed by the author on the front free endsheet, “For Carey McWilliams, with all good wishes . . . Los Angeles Oct 27 ’26”. Crusading author, journalist, editor, and activist Carey McWilliams (1905-1980), as a teenager read H. L. Mencken and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and organized his life according to the Jazz Age dictates as he understood them: “I was sixteen when I enrolled at the University of Denver. By that time I was very much interested in books and had scribbled notes for a kind of a novel about that part of the West. Of course I never wrote it. But I was interested in writing and books. And I read… Read More

Paris: Erotopolis (Maurice Duflou), 1925. First edition thus. 37 + 12 pp., 8 x 10 inches (portfolio), 9.5 x 7.75 inches (prints). Five folded (octavo) text signatures, plus twelve pochoir prints, laid into portfolio of printed paper and cloth over boards, as issued. Prints in fine condition, with occasional tiny spots of foxing not affecting images. Text signatures uncut and in very good condition, with age toning and offsetting to first and last blank page. Portfolio lightly soiled, with mild bumps to corner and small tear to interior paper pastedown, still very good, with remnants of the original ribbon closures. Gerda Wegener (1886–1940) was a Danish illustrator and painter whose representations of women challenged norms of gender and sexuality. She married fellow artist Einar Wegener while still a student; after their relocation to Paris, Einar adopted the name and persona of Lili Erbe. Wegener often used Lili as a model. In 1930, Lili was one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment… Read More

Bozeman, MT: Doring Press, 2019. First printing. (49) pp., 23.5 x 17.5 inches (closed). Reduction woodcuts and archival pigment prints on Asuka and other papers, hand bound in full cloth over boards with printed spine label, housed in cloth-covered clamsell case with matching label, in an edition of twelve numbered copies signed by all three artists. Introductory essay (“The Dance of the Landscape”) by Jeff Rennicke. Layout by Ian van Coller at Doring Press; book design and binding by Rory Sparks in Portland, OR. New. A visual interpretation, in original prints and digital photographs, of the few remnant glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The second in a series of collaborative works by van Coller, Anderson, and Crownover, following their 2015 book The Last Glacier, which explored the backcountry of Glacier National Park in Montana, and which sold out quickly, finding its way into important institutional and private collections, including the Library of Congress, New York Public… Read More

Bozeman, MT: Doring Press, 2019. First printing. (63) pp., 20.5 x 30.5 inches (box, closed), 39 x 29.5 inches (book, open). Layout, design, and printing in archival inks on Asuka paper by the artist, in an edition of eight numbered and signed copies. Landscape photographs and annotations by Ian van Coller; bird photographs by Jose Castaño Hernandez, Aidan van Coller, and Ian van Coller; pencil and watercolor illustrations by Silvina Ospina Cardona. Each copy is accompanied by one of the eight original illustrations reproduced in the book. Bound in full cloth, in cloth-covered clamshell box, by Rory Sparks in Portland, Oregon. New. Growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, Ian van Coller was a birdwatcher early on, and aspired to be a photographer of the natural world, like those whose images he saw in National Geographic. In the event, van Coller became a different kind of photographer, whose work documenting endangered environments around the world has found powerful expression in a series of very… Read More

Lexington, KY: Lexington Camera Club, 1972. First printing. 60 pp., 8.5 x 7.75 inches. Saddle-stapled into printed card covers. Edition of 1000 copies. Light soiling and edge-wear to covers, slight toning to page edges, otherwise fine. The third in a series of exhibitions showcasing work from university and college photography departments across the United States; in this instance, featuring students and faculty from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, University of Louisville, and University of Nebraska, as well as members of the sponsoring organization, the Lexington Camera Club. Organized and directed by Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and shown at the Speed Museum in Louisville, the exhibition included 240 photographs by 55 photographers, including Reed Estabrook, Art Sinsabaugh, Jonathan Green, Minor White, James Alinder, Guy Mendes, Meatyard, and others. Uncommon.

Davis, CA: University of California Davis Library Associates, 1975. First printing. 3.75 x 8.5 inches. A single 8.5 x 11 inch sheet folded twice to make six pages (three of which are printed), sewn into printed covers. Illustration by Mimi Osborne. Designed, hand-set in Neon Helvetica, and printed on Rusdael Rag paper by Sid Berger, assisted by Lee Bartlett, in an edition of two hundred copies signed and numbered by author and artist. Number two in the Fine Art Series from the UCD Library Associates. Covers lightly soiled at edges, otherwise fine.

Walla Walla, WA: Artist, 1995. First printing. (12) pp., 6.75 x 10.75 inches. Printed by hand from foundry type, original linoleum engravings, and plant materials at the Whitman College Book Arts Lab, in an edition of twenty-five signed and numbered copies. Unbound sheets in stiff card folder with printed cover label. As new. Five linoleum engravings of common herbs (chives, rosemary, oregano, mint, basil), printed over pressure prints of plants, each contained in a glassine wrapper printed with a relevant recipe taken from The Complete Book of Herbs & Spices, plus title page and colophon. A striking and elegant production; no copies located in WorldCat.

Cherry Valley, NY: Cherry Valley Editions, 1978. First printing. 79 pp., 5.25 x 8.5 inches. Perfect-bound in printed card covers. Light soiling to edge of back cover, and faint vertical scratch to front cover, otherwise a fine, bright, and tight unread copy, virtually as new and uncommon in such nice condition.

Portland, OR: Northwest Photography Archive & Oregon State University Press, 2008. First printing. 345 pp., 12 x 12.5 inches. Cloth over boards in printed dust-jacket. With 134 full-page reproductions, and an introduction, epilogue, list of plates, notes, acknowledgments, selected bibliography, and index. From the first printing of five thousand copies, designed and produced by John Laursen, this is one of one hundred special copies, numbered and signed by Laursen, housed in a special slipcase, and accompanied by an archival digital pigment print of an 1867 Carleton Watkins photograph, "Cape Horn." A gorgeous production. As new. The Northwest Photography Archive was the culmination of many years of research, field work, collecting, planning, and organization — not to mention fundraising! — by Terry Toedtemeier and John Laursen. Wild Beauty, the first publication of the Archive, appeared in tandem with a celebrated exhibition of the same name at the Portland Art Museum, where Toedtemeier, a… Read More

London: Gogmagog Private Press, 1967. First printing. (24) pp., 4 x 7.75 inches. Patterned paper over boards, with printed spine label, issued without dust-jacket. With three two-color intaglio prints. Designed, illustrated, printed, and bound by the author in an edition of one hundred numbered and signed copies; this is one of sixty which were for sale. Light wear to corners and edges, spine label curling slightly, with a lean to the spine and a touch of toning to page edges, still a very good copy of a fragile production. Fourteen severely brief three-line poems, with less austere and even playful illustrations. The author notes, "The purpose of these Triads is to offer something very near the ultimate in poetic simplicity. They aim to bring together two unrelated elements by a third in such a way that an unstated meaning may be suggested to the reader." Like all of the Gogmagog productions, an elegant and scarce book.

Seattle: Mill Mountain Press, 1971. First printing. 56 pp., 6 x 9 inches. Side-stapled and glued into printed card covers. Uncredited frontispiece portrait of the author, and two-color title page illustration, repeated in part on the front cover. The usual sunning to the spine, and three very small discolorations to back cover that suggest strongly that the binding of this issue is actually stapled and then glued into the wrappers (a detail I've not seen previously noted), otherwise very close to fine and uncommon thus. The author's scarce first book, inscribed to publisher E. V. Griffith: For E.V. Griffith, This is about the last book from the original edition; another will be out soon. Frank Stanford Additionally, Stanford has added "Partisan R." to the list of previous publications on the copyright page, in the same ink as the inscription, and someone — almost certainly the author — has in a different color of ink crossed out the last sentence of the short biography on the last page, which… Read More