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Massimo Vignelli; Bob Noorda. New York Subway Guide.
New York: New York City Transit Authority, 1972. Color-printed map, 17.5 x 21 inches
unfolded.
WITH
: New York City Graphic Standards Manual.
Vicenza: Standards
Manual LLC, 2014. Large square folio, 13.5 x 13.5 inches, publisher’s red cloth.
176 color and monochrome plates, three folding. $750.
1972 first issue of Massimo Vignelli’s iconic New York City subway map,
accompanied by the deluxe facsimile reissue of the 1970
NewYork City Graphic
Standards Manual
. In 1966, the design firm Unimark, founded by Massimo Vignelli
and Bob Noorda, set out to unify the graphic elements of the vast New York City
subway system, a subterranean network cobbled together out of existing transit
lines, each with its own local signs and systems. Unimark’s proposal, presented
in the 1970
Graphic Standards Manual
, laid the foundation for the crisp modern
graphics of the New York subway: a bright color and letter for each line, and
a clean sans-serif typeface (first Standard Medium, then Helvetica) across all
stations. Vignelli’s streamlined, almost abstract subway map epitomized the
design innovations of the Unimark proposal, becoming one of the most instantly
recognizable (and controversial) visual representations of the city. The map was
in production from 1972 to 1979; this copy is first issue, with the KK local line
still in service. Map and book fine.
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Miguel de Cervantes; E. McKnight Kauffer (illustrator), [Roger Fry].
Don Quixote de la Mancha.
London: Nonesuch Press, 1930. Two octavo volumes, publisher’s full morocco.
21 color plates. Presentation inscription from E. McKnight Kauffer to Roger Fry. $2200.
Fine press edition of Cervantes’s great picaresque novel, limited to 1475 copies.
Originally issued in two parts in 1605 and 1615,
Don Quixote
begins as a parody of
chivalric romances, but expands to examine the whole of Spanish society through
the adventures of the deluded Quixote and his long-suffering companion Sancho
Panza. “A world of disorderly Notions, pick’d out of his Books, crouded into his
Imagination; and now his Head was full of nothing but Inchantments, Quarrels,
Battles, Challenges, Wounds, Complaints, Amours, Torments, and abundance
of Stuff and Impossibilities.” This copy is warmly inscribed by the illustrator:
“for Roger Fry, without whose encouragement this book would not have been
done—E. McKnight Kauffer, 1930.” The preeminent English art critic of his
day, Fry was instrumental in promoting Kauffer’s work through the Omega
Workshops, the influential Bloomsbury design collective Fry directed with
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant; in 1925, Fry contributed the introduction to
the printed catalogue of Kauffer’s modernist posters. A near-fine copy, with an
important English art historical association.
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