SUZANNE BIZARD (1873 – 1963) France

Pair of French Art Deco “Snail” bookends c. 1925

Original silvered cast bronze full dimensional snails on  black Portoro marble plinth bases

Signed: S. Bizard

H: 5 1/8″ x D: 5 3/4″

African Bronze “Tree of Life” Sculpture 20th Century

Sand cast bronze with a brown black patina with golden highlights in an open work design depicting 18 figures perched on a tree form with various intricate pattern details.

***As a Primitive / Tribal sculpture this piece visually relates to some of the sculpture and painting of the renowned French artist Jean Dubuffet.

H: 18 1/2″ x D: 4″ x W: 8″

MADONNA (1958-)

“Sex” 1992

Spiral-bound aluminum hardcover, CD included
Photography by Steven Meisel Studio & Fabien Baron
Edited by Glenn O’Brien
Published by Warner Books, Div. of Time Warner, 1992

Dimensions:
Book: H: 13 7/8” x W: 11”
Custom leather box: H: 15 ¾” x W: 12 5/8” x D: 2 ¼”
Custom silk slipcase: H: 16 1/6” x W: 13 3/16” x D: 2 5/8”

AD
“An Intimate Journal for Art Directors and Production Managers” 1941
Published by Steinweiss

Dimensions:
Book: H: 8 1/8” x W: 5 ¾”
Custom leather box: H: 9 1/16” x W: 6 9/16” x D: 1 7/16”
Custom silk slipcase: H: 12 9/16” x W: 9 3/16” x D: 2 ¾”

An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, production Managers, and their Associates
The Alex Steinweiss Issue
[Alex Steinweiss] Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: A-D [AN INTIMATE JOURNAL FOR ART DIRECTORS, PRODUCTION MANAGERS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATES]. New York: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., June-July 1941 [Volume 7, No. 5]. Original edition. Spiral-bound paper-covered boards printed in 4-color letterpress. Screen-printed acetate frontis. Cover faintly creased. Interior contents unmarked and very clean. Letterpress cover designed by Alex Steinweiss. One of the hardest issues of PM/AD to find in collectible condition. A nearly fine copy.
This Steinweiss cover is widely recognized as a singular high point in American Graphic Design that has been reproduced in countless histories and anthologies.
5.5 x 8 digest with 68 [16] pages including numerous color and b/w reproductions. The artwork is reproduced in four-color letterpress, and magnificent b/w photo engraving. There is even a screen-printed acetate title page! Truly an increbible single issue of a trend-setting publication.
Contents for this issue:
• 16 page color profile of Alex Steinweiss, Art Director for Columbia Records (many examples of cutting edge streamline moderne graphics).
• Herbert Bayer’s Design Class: 13 b/w pages of student photomontages by William Taber, Gene Federico, E. G. Lukacs, Eleanor Mayer, Ernest Cabat, Jere Donovan, Fritz Brosius, Sol Benenson, David Weisman, Robert Pliskin, R. H. Blend, Eugene Zion, Edmund Marein.
• What is Taught and Why – A Footnote to the Recent Bayer Classwork Exhibit at the A-D Gallery.
• Designs in Glass by contemporary Artists from the Steuben Collection: 16 b/w pages including full-page reproductions of the art-glass work of Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Raoul Dufy, Duncan Grant, Jean hugo, Peter Hurd, Fernand Leger, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Georgia oπKeefe and others.
• Peter Takal: 8 pages of b/w illustrations
• A-D Shorts mention Irving Pasternack , Herbert Roan, Bill Crawford, Leon Friend, Robert L. Leslie.
• Books Reviewed: Animal Drawing by John Skeaping; The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson
Nineteenth Annual of Advertising Art – 1940
• Trade advertising for Arrow Engraving Co., The Composing Room, Inc., Wilbar Photo Engraving Co. , Ludlow Typograph Co., Supreme Printing Service, Strathmore Paper Co., Reliance Reproduction Co., Flower Electrotypes, Pioneer Moss, Walker Rackliff, Fuchs and Lang Mfg. Co., Spiral, United Looseleaf Corp., Lumarith Protectoid.
In 1939, at the age of 23, Alex Steinweiss revolutionized the way records were packaged and marketed. As the first art director for the recently formed Columbia Records, Steinweiss saw a creative opportunity in the company’s packaging for its 78 rpm shellac records. The plain cardboard covers traditionally displayed only the title of the work and the artist. “They were so drab, so unattractive,” says Steinweiss, “I convinced the executives to let me design a few.” For what he saw as 12-inch by 12-inch canvasses inspired by French and German poster styles, he envisioned original works of art to project the beauty of the music inside. In 1947, for the first LP, Steinweiss invented a paperboard jacket, which has become the standard for the industry for nearly 50 years.
Alex Steinweiss was born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. His father loved music and instilled the passion in him. In 1930, Steinweiss entered Abraham Lincoln High School. His first artistic endeavors resulted in beautifully articulated marionettes. These brought him to the attention of the art department chair, Leon Friend, co-author of Graphic Design (1936), the first comprehensive American book on the subject.
Steinweiss’s first day in Friend’s class was a magical experience. “To see these young men painting letters with flat-tipped brushes was one of the great inspirations of my life,” he says, “I had to get involved with that!” He learned the principles of design and how to apply them through daily contact with the endless array of beautiful examples of poster design, typography, drawing, and calligraphy. Friend exposed Steinweiss to the works of the great graphic designers of the time, including Lucian Bernhard, A.M. Cassandre, and Joseph Binder.
Upon graduation from high school, the School Art League awarded Steinweiss a one-year scholarship to Parsons School of Design in New York. He almost left after the first year, convinced, in spite of the depression, that he would be able to get a job. Before quitting school, however, he wrote to illustrator Boris Artzybasheff, who, instead of offering employment, advised Steinweiss to finish school.
Steinweiss followed his advice. Afterward he presented himself, unannounced, to the New York studio of Lucian Bernhard, the German master of poster and type design. Bernhard’s son, Carl, answered the door with a rankled, “Don’t you know you’re supposed to call for an appointment?” But Steinweiss confidently handed him his portfolio and requested that the master peruse it. Carl glanced at the work, was impressed, and brought it to his father. A half an hour later, Bernhard came out of his office and informed Steinweiss that he had already phoned Joseph Binder, the Viennese poster maker who was looking for an assistant. Steinweiss worked for Binder for almost three years until he quit to form his own studio. Six months later he got a call from Robert L. Leslie, who recommended him as an art director to Columbia Records.
At Columbia, Steinweiss evolved a unique cover art style mingling musical and cultural symbols. His first cover, for a collection of Rodgers and Hart music, featured a theater marquee with the album’s title appearing in lights. He designed images for jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines, and numerous classical, folk and pop recordings. Newsweek reported that sales of Brt/no Walter’s recording of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony “increased 895%” with its new Steinweiss cover.” His signature, the “Steinweiss scrawl,” became ubiquitous on album covers in the 1940s.
A-D magazine was the leading voice of the U. S. Graphic Arts Industry from its inception in 1934 (originally titled PM) to its end in 1942. As a publication produced by and for professionals, it spotlighted cutting-edge production technology, such as acetate inserts, 4-color letterpress printing, custom binding and the highest possible quality reproduction techniques (from engraving to plates). PM and A-D also championed the Modern movement by showcasing work from the vanguard of the European Avant-Garde well before this type of work was known to a wide audience.

ROBERT INDIANA (1928-) USA
ROBERT CREELEY (1926-2005) USA
“Numbers” 1968
Folio, illustrated with 10 original silkscreen prints, stiff boards, printed dust jacket
Published by Domberger Stuttgart-Schmela Düsseldorf

Dimensions:
Book: 9 15/16” x W: 8 3/8”
Custom leather box: H: 11 3/8” x W: 9 1/16” x D: 1 3/8”
Custom silk slipcase: H: 12 3/8” x W: 9 ¾” x D: 2 1/16”

HERBERT BAYER (1900-1985) Austria

Self portrait   1932 (printed later)

Silver gelatin print

Edition: 28/40

Signed: bayer 32 (in ink on bottom right corner)

Provenance: Kennedy Gallery, New York

H: 13 7/16” x W: 9 ½”

Framed size: H: 21 ½” x W: 17 ½”

Price: $16,000

Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985) was an Austrian graphic designer, painter, photographer, and architect. Bayer apprenticed under the artist Georg Schmidthammer in Linz. Leaving the workshop to study at the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony, he became interested in Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus manifesto. After Bayer had studied for four years at the Bauhaus under such teachers as Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy, Gropius appointed Bayer director of printing and advertising. In the spirit of reductive minimalism, Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted use of all-lowercase, sans serif typefaces for most Bauhaus publications. Bayer is one of several typographers of the period including Kurt Schwitters and Jan Tschichold who experimented with the creation of a simplified more phonetic-based alphabet. Bayer designed the 1925 geometric sans-serif typeface, universal, now issued in digital form as Architype Bayer that bears comparison with the stylistically related typeface Architype Schwitters.

 In 1928, Bayer left the Bauhaus to become art director of Vogue magazine’s Berlin office. He remained in Germany far later than most other progressives. In 1936 he designed a brochure for the Deutschland Ausstellung, an exhibition for tourists in Berlin during the 1936 Olympic Games. In 1938 he left Germany and settled in New York City where he had a long and distinguished career in nearly every aspect of the graphic arts. In 1946 Bayer relocated again. Hired by industrialist and visionary Walter Paepcke, Bayer moved to Aspen, Colorado as Paepcke promoted skiing as a popular sport. Bayer’s architectural work in the town included co-designing the Aspen Institute and restoring the Wheeler Opera House, but his production of promotional posters identified skiing with wit, excitement, and glamour. Bayer would remain associated with Aspen until the mid-1970s. Bayer gave the Denver Art Museum a collection of around 8,000 of his works. In 1959, he designed his “fonetik alfabet”, a phonetic alphabet, for English. It was sans-serif and without capital letters. He had special symbols for the endings -ed, -ory, -ing, and -ion, as well as the digraphs “ch”, “sh”, and “ng”. An underline indicated the doubling of a consonant in traditional orthography.

ANDREE FLAMANT-DUCANY-GIDE (1882-1970) France
VALSUANI FONDEUR (1899-1981) Paris, France

Cubist mask sculpture  20th Century

Cast bronze with rich brown-black patina (possibly cast at a later date by the Valsuani Foundry)

Marks: G. Flamant, 2/8 C. Valsuani Cire Perdue (signed on chin)

H: 11” x W: 7” x D: 5 ½”;
On stand: H: 18 ½”

Price: $35,000

ANDREE FLAMANT-DUCANY-GIDE
Flamant-Gide was born in Nimes, France on January 2nd, 1892 and died on March 28th 1970.  She was both a painter and sculptor and exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artists Francais beginning in 1923. She sculpted in an angular Cubist style influenced by African Art and was a fellow artist of Joseph Csaky, Gustave Miklos, Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens who were considered the leading Art Deco sculptors in Paris during the 1920’s.

CUBISM

Cubism drew its influence from: Cezanne’s structural analysis in his oil landscapes, e.g. ‘La Montagne Sainte Victorie’ c.1887; Gauguin’s figurative landscapes, e.g. ‘Haymaking’ 1889; and African tribal Art such as Gabon masks. European artists were greatly influenced by African and Oceanic Art during the late 1890s and early 1900s. African sculpture, with its bold shapes and lines, had a great impact on the development of Cubism. Maurice de Vlaminck became a keen admirer and collector of African masks after seeing them in a Paris anthropological museum. He purchased similar masks and his excitement for these works displaying bold primitive expressions and simplistic design filtered through to Matisse, Derain, Gris and Picasso, who all became collectors as well. By the 1920s African art exhibitions were common in Paris and other cities throughout Europe.
Cubist sculpture brought the simplified shapes of Cubist painting together with the three-dimensional modeling medium of sculpture. The first Cubist sculpture, which could be properly deemed as such was made by Picasso in 1909 and was titled ‘Head of a Woman’. However Picasso did experiment with sculptural forms as early as 1907 when he found himself fascinated and deeply influenced by African masks. Cubist sculpture was mostly reminiscent of Analytical Cubism in its stripping away of illusionist details to reveal the fundamental form contained in each individual subject, be it human or still-life.

VALSUANI FOUNDRY
The Valsuani foundry was started by the brothers Claude and Attilio Valsuani who learned the foundry trade while employed at the Hebrard foundry.  While working for Hebrard, Claude Valsuani showed great promise as a finisher and eventually worked his way up to become the Technical Director of the Hebrard foundry. In 1899 Claude Valsuani started his own foundry in Chatillon, casting mostly small works for various artists primarily using the lost wax technique of casting (cire perdue). In 1905 he moved his foundry to 74 Rue des Plantes in Paris. Among the famous sculptors who had the Valsuani foundry cast their works were: Renoir, Picasso, Despiau, Paul Troubetzkoy, Matisse, and Gaugin. Claude Valsuani died in 1923 in his native Italy but his son, Marcele then took over the foundry and continued the tradition of producing extremely fine bronzes until the 1970’s.

CHRISTOPHER DRESSER (1834-1904) UK
MINTON, Stoke-on-Trent, England

“Cloisonné” vase 1867

Glazed porcelain with polychrome enamel decoration and gilding

Marks: MINTON, date cipher for 1867

Illustration: Truth, Beauty, Power: Dr. Christopher Dresser 1834-1904, exhibition catalogue, Historical Design, Inc. (New York, 1998) p. 78.

H: 9 7/8”

CHRISTOPHER DRESSER (1834-1904) UK
OLD HALL EARTHENWARE CO. (1861-1886) Staffordshire, UK

“Persia Pattern” dinner plate c. 1861-1886

Overall cream gloss glazed octagonal-shaped earthenware dinner plate from the “Persian” pattern with transfer-printed and over-glazed ornate foliate motif; each corner contains two shallow indentations for condiment use.

Marks: Old Hall and Persia Marks

W: 9 15/16″

The identical plate in the “Persia Pattern” can be found in the collection of the Wolfsonian. A soup plate in the identical “Persia Pattern” can be found in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

CHRISTOPHER DRESSER  (1834-1904)  UK
HEATH & MIDDLETON  Birmingham, England

Claret jug   1881

Very rare model in sterling silver with a bone handle, crystal body

Marks: JTH JHM, Reg. mark for May 9, 1881, London assay marks for 1881 (“F” in a shield)

Illustrated: Truth, Beauty, Power: Dr. Christopher Dresser 1834-1904, exhib. cat. Historical Design, Inc. (New York, 1998) p. 63

This signature Dresser claret jug appears in Nikolaus Pevsner’s landmark book from 1936 entitled “Pioneers of Modern Design”.

H: 8 3/8″