The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast

(Watertown, MA): Anne and David Bromer, 1977. Kunikata-Cockram, Midori. (24)pp. The text is printed on Japanese paper with ornamentation in green. Wood engravings by Sarah Chamberlain, as her first miniature book commission. This is the first miniature book published by the Bromers. Midori Kunikata-Cockram captures the whimsical nature of the text, which was the first English poem for children intended for sheer amusement. The front and rear boards of her designer binding are covered with parchment, on which the artist has hand-drawn the insects and small animals attending the feast amongst a pattern of vines and flowers in crimson ink. Delicate onlays of black morocco create the silhouette of a vine climbing up the book's burgundy morocco spine. Inside, endpapers printed with oak leaves and cut-out leaves with hand-drawn shading in pastel reference the oak tree in the poem, beneath which the revels were held. Housed in a suede-lined box, the exterior of which is covered with paper hand-tooled in a foliate pattern and gilt-titled to the morocco spine. A parchment tab painted with a butterfly on one side and a grasshopper on the reverse, helps to lift the book out of the box. With the binder's blind-stamped mark to the penultimate endleaf and signed by Chamberlain to the colophon. Extremely fine. (Bromer, pp. 11-16). (2 1/2 by 2 1/8; 63x53mm).