Jun 10, 2015 - Sale 2387
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Sale 2387 - Lot 75

Price Realized: $ 4,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
GOUDY, FREDERIC. Extracts from Night Thoughts [by] Edward Young. Illuminated Manuscript. 10 pages of hand-calligraphed text with illustrated borders and initial letters on vellum, in watercolor, gouache, and ink, heightened throughout in gold. [2], [10] pages. 4to, Gothic style binding of boards painted in colors and burnished gold with leather spine, scuffed and separated, needs rebinding; watered silk floral endpapers, scattered wrinkling and some natural discoloration to vellum margins. initialed by goudy on title-page. Np, circa 1890
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Additional Details

scarce, early handmade book by the great typographer and type designer. Possibly created in Chicago where he was working in the 1890s and began his Camelot Press which published The Chap Book, his first attempt at printing and book design. Soon thereafter, with his wife Bertha and fellow designer Will Ransom, he created The Village Press in Oak Ridge, Illinois. It moved to Boston, New York City, and finally, to Marlborough-on-Hudson. The lettering in this manuscript is in a fairly traditional Gothic style, perhaps as an experimental exercise for his early type designs. The scrolled floral borders around the text are of a Florentine style and delicately heightened in gold. The curious binding is not by, but is somewhat in the manner of, the famous Siennese forger of medieval wood panel bindings, Icilio Joni, especially in its simple glued leather spine. A lovely and unique work that displays the early creativity of one of the most important and prolific figures in the world of type design.