?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
OAKLEY, VIOLET. The Holy Experiment: A Message to the World from Pennsylvania. Printed in red and black after Oakley's calligraphy. 22 tipped-in color plates by Oakley reproducing her murals in the Pennsylvania State Capitol. Elephant folio (570 x 385 mm; 22 1/2x15 inches), contents loose as issued in 7 fascicles within original gilt-stamped tan goat skin, lettered and decorated in gold and blind, with brass clasps, a few minor scuffs, light rubbing to extremities. Prospectus, subscription card, TLS from the printer, and Supplement laid in. Philadelphia: Oakley, 1922
number 41 of 250 copies signed by oakley and printed for subscribers. Included and laid in is the International Supplement and Key To the Holy Experiment with text in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. A Typed Letter Signed by the printer and distributor, Edith Emerson, to a subscriber, describing it as "A work which has been so quickly and so generally recognized as a significant interpretation of American Federalism to the world at large, and an artistic achievement of the first rank" and mentions subscribers including Joseph Widener and the Victoria and Albert Museum. For this project, which took her 16 years to complete, she was the first American woman to receive a public mural commission as well as the first woman to receive a Gold Medal of Honor from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art.
