?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
Bjerregaard, Carl Henrik A. (1845-1922) Sufi Interpretations of the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald, one of only five copies.
New York: J.F. Taylor & Co., 1902.
Limited deluxe edition, quarto; number 2 of only 5 unsigned Jamshyd copies; text from Fitzgerald's fourth edition printed in red and black, this copy with delicate hand-coloring and gilt enhancements to decorative borders and vignette illustrations; including 6 original vignette watercolor paintings, one on each of the three preliminary and final blanks; with an additional chromolithograph title, six hand-colored plates, some heightened in gold, and three monochrome plates, all protected by captioned tissue guards; bound in pictorial brown pigskin by H & M Eaton, 1903, the boards and doublures beautifully painted with angelic figures and cosmic imagery surrounded by intertwining grape vines, red moire silk endleaves, marbled flyleaves (a few small spots; one torn tissue guard; front board detached, spine somewhat darkened); 12 1/4 x 8 3/4 in.
With: An original black-and-white watercolor painting, likely depicting a Sufi leader, inserted between two leaves; 11 1/4 x 7 in.
This deluxe copy of Bjerregaard's limited work differs from the Ramazan edition of 26 in that it offers perhaps an earlier version of the lavish illustrations. The hand-colored plates in the present lot appear in a less refined, albeit more vibrant, state. For example, one illustration here depicts a cleanshaven man, while the same plate in the Ramazan edition shows him with a rather large mustache. In another, of a figure standing in a doorway, the details are less precise, and the figure appears smaller with a green hat instead of larger with a red one. In fact, many of the figures' hats differ between the two copies. The binding materials (not including the binding itself), however; are the same. The same red moire silk is used for the endleaves and the marbled endpapers in each edition were clearly produced simultaneously. The remarkable evolution of Bjerregaard's work is on full display here, and the variations in the artistic process are a joy to witness. No copies of the Jamshyd edition have ever appeared at auction, and only one can be tracked to an institutional collection at the University of Texas, Austin, which appears in a similar pictorial binding though it is far less elaborate than the one offered here.
