Order Nr. 89578 THE ART DECO BOOK IN FRANCE. Gordon N. Ray.

THE ART DECO BOOK IN FRANCE.

Edited by Tanselle, G. Thomas. Printed by Heritage Letterpress of Charlotte, North Carolina.

  • Charlottesville, VA: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 2005.
  • 6 x 9 inches
  • hardcover
  • 159 pages
  • ISBN: 1883631122
  • ISBN: 9781883631123

Price: $50.00  other currencies

Order Nr. 89578

When Gordon Ray delivered the Lyell Lectures at Oxford in 1985, he chose as his subject the Art Deco book illustrations and bindings produced in France in the 1920s. This topic was not a surprising choice, for he had previously written magisterial annotated catalogues, largely based on his own collection, of British illustrated books from 1790 to 1914 and of French illustrated books from 1700 to 1914. His Lyell Lectures formed a natural continuation of the latter and gave him the opportunity to express his views on still another area in which, through his collecting and research, he had become expert. He accompanied his lectures with 183 slides, the majority of them in color, and those illustrations are in fact the reason that the lectures have not been published until now: the expense of producing so many illustrations was too daunting for the publishers that Ray approached.
Today a happy solution to this problem is available in the form of digital presentation on the internet, and Ray's work is now being offered in a combination of printed and electronic forms. The verbal text of his lectures is letterpress printed in this present volume (supplemented by eight plates, showing striking examples of the work of the major figures discussed), and all of the available illustrations are being published on the website of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia.