Fine Books from the Veatchs Arts of the Book

Here's a book by a woman who couldn't keep away from the racetrack: My Suffolk Downs. Poems and Photographs by Melissa Shook. The Veatchs note that Melissa Shook came to Boston in 1974 to teach photography at MIT, “discovered Suffolk Downs, and over the next thirty years photographed the race track, concentrating on trainers, hot walkers, exercise riders, horse shoers, dentists, those who delivered hay, feed, and ice, and the jockeys and their agents.” Hopefully she had enough sense to stay away from the parimutuel windows. This is a new book, just published in 2012, printed at the Kat Ran Press, and signed by the author. Item 79. $155.

Item 75 is a book about a book: The Kelmscott Press Golden Legend, A Documentary History of Its Production. The Golden Legend was a medieval collection of pious material concerning saints. It was evidently quite popular, considering the number of manuscript copies of this pre-printing work still in existence today. The Kelmscott version was released in 1892... slowly. William Morris had intended for this to be the first work of the Kelmscott Press, but its size (three volumes) and complexity was such that he ended up publishing some shorter pieces first. This history of the Kelmscott printing was written by William S. Peterson and published in 1990. $600.

Item 7 is an interesting title: Icones Liborium Artifices. Being Actual, Putative, Fugitive, & Fantastical Portraits of Engravers, Illustrators & Binders. It is the work of Leonard Baskin, who was all of those (well, maybe not a bookbinder) and many other vocations, being an artist, sculpture, teacher, and operator of a private press. This book contains color portraits with shaped text of 32 people in the book arts field Baskin appreciated. Some of those included are Aubrey Beardsley, Sarah Prideaux, Dard Hunter, and Laurence Housman, along with many whose names are less familiar. This is one of 40 signed and numbered copies, produced at Baskin's Gahenna Press in 1988. $17,500.