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Price: US$3000.00 + shipping
Description: Small quarto. [38]pp. plus 7 leaves of plates produced especially for this title, versos blank. Title printed in black and red. Goudy Antique handset type. Original decorated batik boards. Minor bumping to spine ends, but a very fine copy without the usual offsetting from the plates. Binding tight. Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) was born on a ranch near Fresno, California. He was a prominent illustrator and landscape and mural painter of the early 20th-century painter of the American West. "Dixon sought to 'interpret the vastness, the loneliness' of the western scene. On the theory that by showing little, much could be conveyed, he succeeded in bringing to his audience the very essence of an untamed and oftentimes inhospitable land. He did this through keen observation and unrelenting effort, for he was almost entirely without formal training." - Doris Ostrander Dawdy (Artists of the American West Volume 1: A Biographical Dictionary, p. 71). One of 250 copies privately printed by the Grabhorn Press for the author. "Some copies sold." The Grabhorn Bibliography mentions two different bindings for this book: coarse tan linen with decorations hand-painted in orange on front and back covers, or tan boards printed in black. This copy is an original Grabhorn binding but is a variant not mentioned in the Bibliography. In any case, there were variations as revealed by the following quote cited in the Grabhorn Bibliography: ". a flier, as I remember; it was first intended for private distribution. Later some appeared on sale. I think they had a hard time giving it away. though I have since had many requests for it. On second thoughts both Grab and I admitted it could have been much better done." (Author). This work is very rare and very sought-after, especially in this condition. [Grabhorn: 52].
Seller: Ken Sanders Rare Books, ABAA, Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A.