Melbourne Rare Book Fair

Manners and Customs in Manchoukuo

$2000

A detailed and thoroughly illustrated guide in English to life and culture in Manchuria. Published at the height of WWII, depicting a completely normal world inside the Japanese puppet state with chapters on races and tribes, costumes, residential houses, food and drink, salutation and etiquette, tastes and pastimes, annual festivals, religions, symbols of religious faith, and happy and unhappy affairs.

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Hobart Town

$2450

Antique Print Map Room

Rare c.19th detailed hand coloured engraved panorama of Hobart published in 1879. From the original edition of the Australasian Sketcher.

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[Meiji Period Japanese Moveable Type].

$3500

Asia Bookroom

411 examples of Japanese wooden moveable type. The moveable type include kanji, hiragana, katakana and numbers both Japanese and Arabic. The pieces of wooden type shows some signs of use but overall a very good collection.

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Ah! Nana

$1200

The Book Merchant Jenkins

Complete set of the French women’s comic magazine. Ah!Nana ran for nine issues, each with its own theme, coming to a short end following the magazine being banned to minors after the publication of the eighth issue devoted to homosexuality. This led the editorial team to go all in on the ninth and final issue, devoting it to incest, leading to the French censorship Commission banning the publication, labelling it pornographic.

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Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon

$5500

The Book Merchant Jenkins

One of the most striking editions of Fontaine’s adaptation of the story of Cupid and Psyche with coloured stipple engravings by Bonnefoy, Mme Demonchy, and Colibert after Jean-Frederic Schall. This copy extra illustrated and finely bound by the Paris bookbinder Salvador David.

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Nova, et Integra Universi Orbis Descriptio.

$65000

Antique Print Map Room

Oronce Fine’s famous double cordiform map of the world is acknowledged as being one of the most striking and influential world maps published in the c.16th.

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MAUGHAM, W.S. The Razor's Edge.

$5000

Archives Fine Books

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1944. Limited Edition. Octavo : pp. [viii] 343 [3] (blank) : SIGNED : No. 308 of 750 copies : publisher's cloth over bevelled boards, black and gilt title panel to spine. Tip of pp. 145-148 creased. Near fine. “The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.” — Maugham. This limited, signed edition preceded both the American and English trade editions. A bright copy of Maugham's masterpiece of human desire, ambition and success.

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さいころ独楽. 日本酒附録. [1930s Sake Advertising Campaign].

$450

Asia Bookroom

Sixteen delightful small porcelain spinning tops measuring 2.0 x 1.7cm in size each accompanied by ten handsome colour printed product labels heightened in gilt with soft purple cord ties (8.3 x 6cm). These sake promotional giveaways and accompanying die-cut cards in the shape of the Order of the Golden Kite are advertisements associated with Meiyo-gura, a sake brand sold in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. The advertisement describes a koma (spinning top), attached beneath the bottle top, which could also serve as a small entertainment item.

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Self Portrait

$270

Sainsburys Books

Series of Friedlander's self-portraits taken over the course of six decades.

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The Color Star

$500

Sainsburys Books

Itten's Color Star with eight templates that can overlay and display a variety of what he termed "color chords"

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City of Brisbane, Queensland.

$4750

Antique Print Map Room

Very rare, large c.19th hand coloured panorama of Brisbane depicting the wharves at Petrie’s Bight, from a vantage point near All Hallows School, by Albert Henry Fullwood (1863-1930).

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GOTHIC REVIVAL ILLUMINATION. FRENCH ILLUMINATOR. A suite of large neo-gothic illuminated initials.

$9250

Maggs Bros Ltd

Full-page frontispiece illustration with floral border and a central figure of a woman holding two shields in silver, blue and red; 29 illuminated initials in watercolour and gouache, gilded, and some partly with gold foil; all on wove paper. 1840-60.

雙六式國史早わかり. [Sugoroku - Quick View of Japan's History].

$650

Asia Bookroom

Large colour folding sugoroku game, 93 x 125cm. This unique and visually rich sugoroku-style educational chart was published in 1927 in Shizuoka by Yamamura Azusa. Intending to present Japanese history through the lens of the imperial lineage, Yamamura sought to make the subject accessible and engaging for children by structuring it as a game. Using the familiar sugoroku board format, he transforms historical chronology into a path of progress, starting with the mythological creation of Japan by the sun goddess Amaterasu at the centre of the chart.

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Metabolism in Architecture

$350

Sainsburys Books

Details the 1960s Japanese architectural movement which envisioned cities as evolving organisms. Led by Tange, Kurokawa, Kikutake, and Maki, it championed modular, adaptable, and sustainable designs.

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CHURCHILL (Winston S.) The Second World War: The Gathering Storm; The Finest Hour; The Grand Alliance; The Hinge of Fate; Closing the Ring; Triumph and Tragedy.

$30750

Maggs Bros Ltd

First editions, first printings. Six volumes. Numerous maps and diagrams, some folding and others full-page, throughout each volume. 8vo. Original black cloth, spines lettered in gilt, top edges in red, supplied dust jackets. London, Cassell & Co. Ltd. 1948-1954. Inscribed to Grace Hamblin, "the longest-serving member of Churchill’s secretarial staff."

The Karla Trilogy | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People | John Le Carre

$1800

Somerset House Books

All First editions and First UK impressions. Together, the trilogy is in a near-fine state overall. Arguably the greatest works of fiction dealing with the Cold War ever written, unified by the ubiquitous Smiley and his Russian equivalent Karla.

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Bonaparte, Napoleon: MILITARY BREVET, 1803, SIGNED 'BONAPARTE'.

$5000

Kay Craddock - Antiquarian Bookseller

Foolscap folio parchment sheet, with engraved letterhead 'Departement de la Guerre, Republique Francaise' incorporating an image of Marianne, wearing a feathered helmet and holding a lowered sword, seated leaning against the table of the Constitution above the words 'Bonaparte, Consul de la Republique'. *The document records the details of service of citizen Ambroise Melac, and 'in the name of the French people' orders other officers to recognize his qualities and rank.

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[Flemish Book of Hours]. Book of Hours (use of Rome).

$267000

INLIBRIS

An outstanding, unpublished Book of Hours with 14 high-quality illuminations, produced around the year 1500, at the apogee of Flemish book illumination. The quality of illumination is remarkable, both in the borders and the full-page miniatures. The execution is neat and flawless. At least three different miniaturists worked on the illumination cycle of this precious Book of Hours. One main hand, however, executed almost all of the images, even the small ones, excepting only the Holy Face at the beginning and King David in Prayer towards the end of the book.

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"THE GREAT COLORPLATE BOOK OF THE NORTH PACIFIC" (Forbes). CHORIS (Louis). Voyage Pittoresque autour du monde ...

$250000

Maggs Bros Ltd

First edition. Rare coloured issue. 105 lithographed plates, folding map & 2 further maps. Folio. Contemporary diced calf with gilt border, rebacked, lightly worn, some toning and spotting to plates & pale dampstaining to final six, repaired tear one plate. Paris,1822. “One of the very valuable and fundamental works on Alaska, California, and the Hawaiian islands” (Lada-Mocarski).

Ongeluckige voyagie van het schip Batavia uytgevaren onder’t beleydt van den E. Francois Pelsaert,

$55000

Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Amsterdam : Gillis Joosten Saeghman, [c.1663]. A rare early illustrated edition of Pelsaert’s account of the wreck of the Batavia. The infamous story of the wreck of the Batavia was first published in Amsterdam in 1647, and the first edition is of the utmost rarity. Five editions followed in the seventeenth century, including two pirated versions, and all of these are considered rare. The Saeghman edition is held in only two Australian collections (neither in Western Australia) and a handful of libraries internationally.

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Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula.

$11500

Antique Print Map Room

Second state of van Loon’s famous, rare double hemisphere map of the world first printed in Amsterdam 1666, issued with the additions of the dedication to Charles II and his coat-of-arms for Moses Pitt’s English Atlas.

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‘INCUNABLE’ OF COMIC PRINTING IN YOKOHAMA. WIRGMAN (Charles), editor. Japan Punch.

$13500

Maggs Bros Ltd

First edition. 42 issues. Lithograph illustrations throughout. Folio. Original flexible boards Light creasing and occasional water-staining. A few marginal pencil annotations in a contemporary hand. Yokohama, R. Meiklejohn, 1876-1880.