Search Results: Titles starting with M from 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop

Gelatin silver print (9 3/8 x 6 3/4 in. on 10 x 8 in. paper). Fine. Signed by Kroll and numbered 3/10 and with Kroll's inkstamp dated 1982.
This photograph shows Madonna backstage at the legendary Danceteria in New York in 1982, at the dawn of her career. At this time Madonna, then in a relationship with Basquiat, was just beginning to develop her solo act. Her debut album appeared the following year, and she became the best-selling female recording artist in history and the fourth best-selling act ever, behind The Beatles, Elvis, and Michael Jackson.
Noted photographer Eric Kroll is best known for his fetish photography, including images published in Fetish Girls (Taschen, 1994).

Large oblong folio. 39 albumen prints, on thick card mounts, recto and verso, comprising: 29 mammoth (approx. 20 x 16 in.), 4 large format (approx. 8 x 10 in.) and 6 medium format (approx. 5 x 8 in.) prints. Six of the mammoth photographs bear the Taber imprint and the Watkins negative number. Contemporary half red morocco gilt, gilt edges. Minimal wear, some fading to the handsome binding. Foxing to mounts. Minor fading. A splendid volume with the prints generally in excellent condition.
This magnificent American West photograph album contains an astounding 21 mammoth photographs by leading photographers including Carleton Watkins, Charles R. Savage, and Isaiah West Taber, as well as other important photographs.
The album features a major new discovery, Carleton Watkins's Sentinel Rock, Down the Valley, from U. Point, Yosemite, which is not in Naef and Hult-Lewis, Carleton Watkins: Complete Mammoth Photographs. Weston Naef has examined this print and confirms that it is the only located example of… Read More

Albumen print (sheet size 17 ½ x 14 ¼ in.). Vignetted portrait. Soiling. A rare large-format portrait.This is a rare large format portrait of the famed general Abner Doubleday. Doubleday played a prominent role in the Union Army from the war's outset. He was was second in command at Fort Sumter when the war started. He later commanded a division at Antietam, Gettysburg and other major battles.
Years later Doubleday was credited with inventing the game of baseball, leading to the establishment of the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, where the first game was said to have been played.
We have never seen another portrait of Doubleday of this size.

19 pages, various sizes but most 20 x 13 cm, each page neatly laid into a larger sheet, in an album together with the printed text of the published work and two engraved portraits of Irving. Old red morocco. Lightly rubbed. Some soiling, occasional ink smudges. Very good.
This is a long, revised autograph manuscript for Washington Irving's The Life of George Washington. This section of the monumental biography presents the growing schism between Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Hamilton, as Washington was considering standing for re-election for a second term. The manuscript, which includes most of chapter 16 of the final volume, opens with Washington reading Jefferson's letter accusing Hamilton and his followers of using the new Constitution "only as a step to an English Constitution." It concludes with Washington's attempts at reconciliation, hoping that "there may be mutual forbearance and temporizing yielding on all sides. Without these I do not see how the reins of government are to be managed, or how… Read More

This splendid, enormous hand-painted map of Beijing shows and names the main streets, official residences of imperial family members, important buildings, temples, geographical features, fortifications and garrisons of the Forbidden, Imperial and Inner Cities.
Only three other examples of this remarkable form of map painted on silk are known, and this is the only example in private hands. Professor K. Tanaka (Sugiura) of Kyoto University, the leading authority on these maps, has located only four examples on silk: National Library of China, Royal Geographical Society, Royal Ontario Museum, and the present example (three copies on paper are known). The National Library of China map on silk, the only one to include the Outer City, was a highlight of the 2016 exhibition at the National Library of Australia, Celestial Empire: Life in China, 1644-1911. That map appeared as a frontispiece in the associated book of the same name.
The map appears to have been drawn primarily to identify and locate… Read More

Salted paper print (15 x 9 ½ in.), later mount. Manuscript pencil caption on mount stating "Hauling columns for the Capitol." Some staining and surface wear. Good dark tones. Dated June 15, 1860 in the negative on the base of the white column.
This rare salt print shows a colossal marble column being carried to the Capitol during its construction. The enormous cart is being drawn by team of twelve or more horses.
The 1850s saw extensive work to the Capitol including its massive extensions and the iconic dome.
This photograph is likely by John Wood, the first official photographer of the United States government. In 1856 Montgomery Meigs, engineer in charge of the Capitol expansion project, hired Wood to serve as its "photographic draftsman." Much of his work consisted of taking photographs of architectural drawings. Wood made photographs of the inaugurations of James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln and later photographed Civil War scenes.
This salt print is a rare survival documenting the… Read More

40 x 32 in. Silver print. Minor conservation by Paul Messier. Flush-mounted to masonite, a little bowed original box frame. A splendid display piece.Steichen made this celebrated photograph for a fundraising campaign for the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies during the first dark days of Nazi Germany. The photographer recalled in his memoir, "This job came at a time when we were getting the news of Hitler's early humiliation of the Jews; they were made to wear arm bands, their stores were labeled, their windows were smashed. I wanted one picture as a sort of answer to this. I asked for a white-haired, strongly-built woman and a huge Bible. She was brought to the studio dressed just as I photographed her in 'The Matriarch.' She couldn't understand my language, and I couldn't understand hers, so my communication with her was all in sign language; but she seemed to grasp it. I hoped that the whole composition would have a certain majesty and, above all, the strength of something invincible" (Steichen,… Read More

Two volumes. Original purple muslin, printed paper spine labels. Spines sunned, rubbed labels stating "Cooper" in an early hand. Faint damp stain at end of vol 2. Slipcase. An excellent set.
Fine first American edition of Cooper's historical novel about Christopher Columbus's first voyage. The Coopers had returned to America in the 1830s, but James continued to explore European influences and settings.
Lea and Blanchard published this work in the year that they issued Poe's first collection of fiction, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, which appeared in an identical binding.
Provenance: Orlie B. Manville, with his curious early bookplate, Helen F. Mathies, George F. Clarke (bookplates).

Albumen print (7 ½ x 10 in.), unmounted. Minor creasing, short closed tear, tone slightly pale but overall excellent. Framed.This fascinating photograph is a variant of the image shown in Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War. In that image, a group of Union officers including the chief of artillery of the Army of the Potomac stands in the foreground, while five members of the mortar crew stand in the background. In the present photograph, shells have been moved to the foreground, and the full crew of nine men is present. The photographs are otherwise essentially identical.
The Dictator, a 13-inch seacoast mortar, was the largest weapon used during the siege of Petersburg. It could send a 225-pound explosive shell more than two miles. During its service in the siege lines, the Dictator fired 218 rounds at Petersburg and its defenses. The mortar was placed on a specially reinforced railroad flatcar, seen here, and run along a spur line of the City Point and Petersburg Railroad into various… Read More