hello from the latest incarnation of the Wine Country Books office

Hello from the latest incarnation of the Wine Country Books office

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Happy Valentine’s Day

Not my photo. My photo usually, but not this time. Tenniel’s illustrations are in the public domain, and so are Rackham’s. So there you go.

Many books caught my fancy and my heart when I was small but none more than Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass with the original Tenniel illustrations… sigh. My true love… and a thousand thanks to my parents for providing me with Alice and with Grimm’s original scary gory fairy tales with lovely grim  illustrations by Walter Crane when I was just a wee bit (but a great reader, very early). They just don’t make ’em like that any more. Delicious. And Happy Valentine’s Day ❤

Today’s book: Kaethe Kollwitz 72 Reproductions 1951

When this volume came to the surface of my pile of ‘to lists’ I was caught by the cultural, historical and personal context of Kollwitz’s haunting work.

From propaganda posters to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, in the first half of the 20th Century the connection between Western art and the cultural and personal history and reality for westerners and those dominated / colonized by the west was stronger than we have seen since.   Worldwide events from the late years of Queen Victoria’s reign through World War II  cast a long shadow. Artists like Kaethe Kollwitz created works that were not just artistically significant. They also documented the experiences of people in the country she loved- poverty, starvation, protest against war, the eyes of widows, children, those who suffered and occasional glimpses of love and happiness- women chatting, mothers with children.

This book contains 72 reproductions of Kollwitz’s drawings, etchings, woodcuts and lithographs. It is quite a study, the first in English. Between the front endpapers I found a catalog dated 1948 from a show at Gallerie St Etienne in New York. The world must still have been reeling from the devastation of World War II.  Carl Zigrosser’s introduction highlights the personal and historical context that gave rise to these spare stark works which say so much so clearly.

Kaethe Kollwitz 72 Reproductions 1951 $55 plus shipping

Book condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket condition: Good

Darkened with age but tight and clean. Two small stains in blank front end papers; former owner’s name stamped on front of dj and on front end paper. Dust jacket has one significant chip and several small rips/edgewear.

Birthday (For L_____, October First) by Jean Starr Untermeyer

‘Don’t worry I’ll return your book’ Movie night at the Wine Country Public Library

Sometimes people hork my photos…

Sometimes I look on amazon and find that my item is not listed for sale, but that amazon is continuing to use my photo of that item for other people’s listings. Whuuuuh? So somehow my item was at some point listed, the photo was grabbed, and now my item is no longer available for sale but someone is using my photo.

This database crap is so easy to screw up with the most minute difference in, say, one character.  So while I am frustrated, I don’t imagine this is malice on anyone’s part, unless the people who made the software I use for listings, who can’t seem to give me documentation as to how this really works, are just maliciously negligent.

It takes a good bit of effort to take these photos and get them posted, so I at least need to be able to use them for my own purposes too. So I decided to try something.  I hope it works. I know it is amateurish. An amateur is what I am. I wish I had the skills and the software to put a little transparent Wine Country Books logo water mark on each photo… maybe soon. So, so much to learn and try to make it all work.  

Striving toward such an epitaph

“It is my belief that having reached this concluding chapter, the reader must be aware by now that Tennessee Williams is a man with fewer major faults than many less interesting people.” Gilbert Maxwell, Tennessee Williams and Friends An Informal Biography. 1965, World Publishing Company