Of the Just Shaping of Letters, From the Applied Geometry of Albrecht Dürer, Book III. Translated by R. T. Nichol from the Latin Text of the Edition of MDXXXV.
NY: Grolier Club, 1917. 81/2 x 12 1/4. 40 pages illustrated throughout plus 3 plates. Dürer's letter are a rich, velvety black, occasionally touched up with India ink by BR. Bound in quarter vellum & the uncommon marbled boards. Most copies were in the "wartime" binding of brown boards. Board edges & tips are worn; there is a very slight separation at the front and rear endpapers, otherwise contents are fine.
Frederic Goudy's copy, a Library of Congress duplicate (of the Rosenwald copy). Commemorative bookplate tipped inside front cover. Call number in pencil inside rear cover is stamped "surplus duplicate." Item #19029
One of Rogers' great books; the only book BR handset & printed himself.
One of 215 copies, printed at the "Mall Press." Most BR's letters to Kent about the trials of printing and binding this book in wartime England--with its shortages of materials & workers--are well worth reading (Blumenthal, A Life pp. 56-63). Dürer was created at Emery Walker's establishment on the Mall, near the Doves Bindery and Kelmscott House. The composing room was an abandoned green house in Walker's garden. When the pressman was called up to serve, BR had no choice but to print the book himself.
"I'd never run a press of any kind...There is of course no heat anywhere and I have to dampen the Kelmscott hand-made in the converted kitchen. Both my hands and feet have developed chilblains." Rogers set two pages at a time, carrying the formes to the tram which bore him to the press, located a mile and a half away up the Mall. As only one press was capable of printing the formes, and it was used also to print maps for the Government, there were many delays. Procuring binding materials was similarly fraught. Still, BR considered the Dürer one of his most succesfsul "30." Warde *126.
Price: $3,750.00