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Thomas Lowinsky. Modern Nymphs: Being A Series of Fourteen Fashion Plates.
With an Introductory Essay on Clothes by Raymond Mortimer.
London: Frederick
Etchells and Hugh Macdonald, 1930. Tall slim folio, original brown cloth gilt over
patterned paper boards. $1250.
First edition, one of 150 numbered copies, with fourteen Art Deco fashion plates
inspired by the Greek myths and hand-colored in
pochoir
. Thomas Lowinsky’s
surreal illustrations include “Circe and Cocktails Prepared for the Fleet,” “Danae
Waiting for theWeather Report on theWireless,” “Helen Turns Modiste to
Retrieve Her Fallen Fortunes,” and “Clyte Abandons the Old Sun for the New”
(an early depiction of indoor tanning).With an introductory essay on modern
clothes by art critic Raymond Mortimer, member of the Bloomsbury group: “our
feeling for the stream-line seems an indestructible part of the civilisation in which
we live.We insist on it in motor-cars, we are beginning to prefer it in architecture
and we are unlikely to lose our taste for it in women.”
[GAMES]
. Twelfth Night Characters. Park’s Characters.
London: A. Park, no date,
circa 1830s. Hand-colored pictorial sheet of Twelfth Night character cards with
accompanying riddles, uncut, measuring 19.5 x 14.5 inches. $1000.
Broadside of twenty-four vividly hand-colored cards, each depicting a costumed
ethnic character and a riddle, with answers provided at the base of the sheet. At
Twelfth Night celebrations marking the close of the Christmas season, each party
guest would draw a card, and impersonate that character for the evening: King
of Peace, Queen of Mirth, Ismail Pacha, The English Rose, Cossack of the Don,
How-Ching, Paddy O’Toole, The Yankee Girl, and so on. The riddles favor bad
puns: “Why is a disagreeable woman like a male pig? Because she’s a Bore.”
“Why is London Bridge like the House of Lords? Because it is supported by Piers.”
Publisher Park issued a series of Twelfth Night character cards with different
themes: this set depicts national caricatures from Europe, the Middle East, Asia,
and the United States. A near-fine survival.
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