SHIR HA-SHIRIM [SONG OF SONGS] by Raban, Ze'ev, Illustrator - 1950

Berlin: SD Saltzman/Hasefer, 1923. Cloth. Very Good. new covers with images pasted to covers,not original covers reprint, with script dedication to those with perished in the Shoah

Jerusalem: Hasafer Publishing house, 1923. First edition illustrated by Raban, limited to 500 copies, this copy unnumbered. Folio, unpaginated, [26] colored plates which include the text in Hebrew, mounted opposite the calligraphic text translated to English. Colorful, decorated endpapers with later restoration and reinforcement around edges. Publisher's drab cloth decorated in gilt and silver had been sympathetically rebacked. Boards worn along edges and at corners, toning to pages but plates beautifully preserved with rice papers intact. Manuscript poem inscription from previous owner dated 1926 on front fly (right to left), else clean. A very good, somewhat restored copy. Stunning production from Ze'ev Raban (born Wolf Rawicki, 1890-1970), the leading artist of the Bezalel school, which blended traditional Persian art with Jugendstil and Art Nouveau in depicting Biblical and Zionist themes.

Berlin: SD Saltzman/Hasefer, 1923. Boards. Good +. Brown boards with silver and gilt doves circling with Hebrew letters in the middle, blue and silver pictoral endpapers, 26 tipped in color plates with glassing protective sheets, cover boards evidence of past water staining and slight cracking, some repair to spine and repair of endpapers, slight piece of back endpaper lacking Signed by Z. Raban in English and Hebrew on half title, Jerusalem 30/X 1925