Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$31.99 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: BA1 - A first edition (stated) hardcover book in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has some wrinkling and chipping on the edges, scattered rubbing, scuffing and light scratches, light discoloration and shelf wear. Book has some bumped corners, light vertical wrinklong on the bottom of some last pages, light discoloration and shelf wear. 9.25"x12.25", 269 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. BORN IN PARIS IN 1913, JOHN A. NOBLE is the son of the noted American painter, John ("Wichita Bill") Noble. He spent his early years in the studios of his father and his father's contemporaries, innovative artist and writers of the early part of this century. He moved with his family to this country in 1919, a year which had a great significance to him and foreshadowed his life's work. "It was the greatest wooden ship launching year in the history of the world," he often said. "About 1929 I started my crude drawings and paintings," the artist recalled. "In the wintertime, while still going to school, I was a permanent fixture on the old McCarren line tugs, which had the monopoly on the schooner towing in New York Harbor. This kept them constantly before my eyes. In the summertime, I would go to sea." A graduate of the Friends Seminary in New York City, Noble returned to France in 1931, where studied for one year at the University of Grenoble. There he met his wife and lifetime companion, "the lovely, green-eyed" Susan Ames. When he returned to New York, he studied for one year at the National Academy of Design. From 1928 until 1945, Noble worked as a seaman on schooners and in marine salvage. In 1928, while on a schooner that was towing out down the Kill van Kull, the waterway that separates Staten Island from New Jersey, he saw the old Port Johnston coal docks for the first time. It was a sight, he later asserted, which affected him for life. Port Johnston was "the largest graveyard of wooden sailing vessels in the world." Filled with new but obsolete ships, the great coalport had become a great boneyard. In 1941, Noble began to build his floating studio there, out of parts of vessels he salvaged. From 1946 on, he worked as full-time artist. Often accompanied by his wife, he set off from his studio in a rowboat to explore the Harbor. These explorations resulted in a unique and exacting record of Harbor history in which its rarely documented characters, industries, and vessels are faithfully recorded. An Academician of the National Academy of Design, Noble was the recipient of its most prestigious awards, including two Henry LeGrand Cannon Prizes and the Samuel Finley Breese Morse Medal. An Associate of the Society of American Graphic Artists and Audubon Artists, his work is included in the permanent collections of several institutions both in this country and abroad. Although he was raised in artistic circles and quickly gained recognition for his work, Noble always remained intimate with the people of the Harbor. "I'm with factory people, industrial people, the immigrants, the sons of immigrants," he asserted. "It gives life to it." Late in his life, Noble recalled his first compelling views of New York Harbor. "I was crossing the 134th Street Bridge on the Harlem River on a spring day in 1928, and I was so shocked - it changed my life. I was frozen on that bridge, because both east and west of the bridge were sailing vessels. And I thought sailing vessels, you know, were gone . There it was, and I couldn't eat, or anything; I was so excited." By the time of his death in the spring of 1983, shortly after the passing of his beloved Susan, the sailing vessels he loved were all gone, and the maritime industry in the Harbor had diminished significantly. But Noble's inexorable interest in the sea had not diminished. Although he felt the loss of many kinds of vessels, he was "just as interested in drawing the building of a great modern tanker, the working of a modern dredge, as in the shifting of topsails." In fact, me . My life's work is to make a rounded picture of American maritime endeavor of modern times." Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall
Seller: Bookmarc's, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Price: US$39.95 + shipping
Condition: New
Description: Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993. Brand New in a Brand New dust jacket. PERFECT CONDITION (just removed from the publisher's original shipping carton so we could write this description). NO chips. NO tears. NO creases. NO rubbing. NO fading. Bright, shiny, clean, square and tight. Sharp corners. NOT a library discard. NO owner's name or bookplate. NOT a remainder. Fresh and crisp -- obviously never read. A study of pictorial representations of animals, beautifully illustrated with 276 reproductions, including 74 full page color plates. Examined here are American naturalists, zoologists, illustrators, engravers, changes in printing technology, the influence of photography, etc. Blum was Archivist at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. 1993. First printing with complete number row (13579 10 8642) on the copyright page. Bound in the original gilt-stamped dark brown cloth. From the dust jacket: "The panorama of American animal study, from the natural history of Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon through the development of professional zoology and its large institutions, provides the backdrop for Ann Blum's study of illustration styles. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the move from field natural history to museum and laboratory study together with changes in printing technology helped bring about a dramatic shift from realism to schematization in published zoological illustration. Blum notes, however, that the early emphasis on depicting the living animal in nature had a persistent influence on American zoologists and their pictorial representation of animals. Systematic zoology and its illustration developed within the social context of divergent definitions of science and art, maintains Blum, and the production of zoological illustration reflected the division of labor and demotion of technique at work in society at large. She examines how zoology, in consolidating its self-definition as a profession, also consolidated certain conventions of pictorial representation for its own use, and how developments in printing exerted pressures on the discipline to adopt new technologies and mediums. Her focus on pictorial convention and disciplinary practice gives historical depth to recent sociological approaches to twentieth-century scientific illustration that challenge the traditional supremacy of theory in science studies." Oversize Hardcover. 8.75" wide by 11.25" tall. This large, very heavy book (over 4 pounds before packaging) will require SUBSTANTIAL extra postage for International shipments, but only the standard charge for priority and media mail in the U.S. First Printing of the First Edition. Oversize Hardcover. New/New. xxxiv, 403pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.
Seller: About Books, Henderson, NV, U.S.A.
Price: US$85.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: First University of Texas Press edition. Green cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine. Boards are in near fine condition with very slight rubbing to edges. White illustrated dust jacket with black and red lettering on cover and spine. Jacket is wrapped in mylar and is price clipped. Some soiling and scuffing; minor shelf wear to edges. Tight binding and clean interior. Includes illustrations in both color and black-and-white. This book recounts the story of the creation of John James Audubon's seven volume royal octavo edition of "The Birds of America," the most popular natural history book of the 19th century.
Seller: Back of Beyond Books WH, Moab, UT, U.S.A.
Price: US$200.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: 1 of 1,500 copies. 213 pp; illus. Original cloth, 4to. Very Good+, in very good+ dust jacket.
Seller: Ted Kottler, Bookseller, Redondo Beach, CA, U.S.A.