?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
(BARBIER, GEORGE; and FRANÇOIS-LOUIS SCHMIED.) Schwob, Marcel. Vies Imaginaires. 60 illustrations by Barbier, including 15 hors texte and 42 in texte, wood-engraved by Pierre Bouchet, plus a full additional suite on japan paper, bound in; the book beautifully designed by Schmied. Folio, in a beautiful art deco binding by cretté, successor to Marius Michel, with intertwining gold and silver fillet diamonds, white morocco inlaid centers and dotted shadows, similar design along spine, all edges trimmed and gilt, white morocco doublures with silver, gold, and bronze zig-zag diamond design, rose silk moiré endleaves; gilt-lettered 3/4 brown morocco chemise and rose-gold metallic paper-covered board slipcase edged in morocco. Paris: Le Livre Contemporain, 1929
barbier's own copy of his magnificent livre d'artiste. One of 120 copies created specially for members of Le Livre Contemporain under the direction of E. de Crauzat and A. Bertaut. this is copy number 10, press-signed and -numbered for barbier, himself a member. Also bound in is the Society's menu for their annual dinner on June 26, 1929, which contains a pochoir illustration by Barbier, and is signed by 39 of the attending members including Louis Barthou and Henri Vever, among others. The work itself is a collection of 22 semi-biographical short stories about Petronius, Lucretius, Paolo Ucello, Pocahontas, and William Kidd among other historical figures, first published in the newspaper Le Journal between 1894-95. Incorporating myth and fantasy with historical facts, they are considered among the first of the genre of biographical fiction. Jorge Luis Borges was extremely fond of Schwob's writing and publicly acknowledged that Vies Imaginaires influenced his first book "A Universal History of Infamy" (1954). Georges Rivière, Catalogue 1967, No. 153 (this copy); Ritchie 30; B. Martorelli, George Barbier, The Birth of Art Deco, page 139; Monod 10223; Carteret IV, 361.
