Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$950.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Dark blue cloth with gilt title to spine. A total of 120 black/white plates. German text. Ex-library with perforated library stamp to title page, as well as to the bottom of the last plate, and the usual library remnants to the rear pastedown. Otherwise a tight clean copy with no pervious owners' names or other markings. 9.5 x 12.25 in
Seller: William Chrisant & Sons, ABAA, ILAB. IOBA, ABA, Ephemera Society, Fort Lauderdale, FL, U.S.A.
Price: US$1250.00 + shipping
Description: Hardcover in green boards with gilt titles; missing dustjacket; 16 pages of German text (numbered to XVII) followed by 120 b/w photographic illustrations; very good condition except 1-inch crease to upper right corner of cover and most pages; the crease does not affect any images; gilt on cover and spine intact and bright; still solidly bound; no tears to any pages; tiny gallery stamp on bottom of page IV under the printed copyright info; no other internal marks. Foreign shipping may be extra.
Seller: ANARTIST, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: A very scarce book. The cover is green cloth with title stamped in gilt on front cover and spine. The spine is broken along the title page and page XI is loose. The back inside cover has a some pencil note on the along the top edge from the original owner. The note reads "Purchased by HM at Heinrich Schrag, Nurnberg August 1930 - 38 marks, 50 pfennigs. Delivered via Bremen." The cover has some small tears in the cloth over the bottom right corner edges and the upper middle back has some minor scuffing.
Seller: Oddball Books, Burbank, CA, U.S.A.
Karl Blossfeldt. Urformen der Kunst (120 Bildtafeln). Ernst Wasmuth A.G., Berlin, 1928.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: The 1928 true 1st edition, with its 120 sumptuous plates, beautifully printed in itaglio. Clean, solid and VG+ in its dark-green cloth, with bright gilt-titling along the front panel and rubbed titling at the spine. A touch of light spotting along the edges, minor foxing at the endsheets and pastedowns, one tiny nick (the size of a pinhead) at the spine. Tall quarto, wonderful, heavily-Art Deco period bookplate ("W. Schwintzer/W. Zehlendorf") at the front pastedown. Selected by Andrew Roth's "Book of 101 Books", among other lists (including Parr) of the most seminal photography books of the 20th century.
Seller: APPLEDORE BOOKS, ABAA, WACCABUC, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$1512.50 + shipping
Description: First edition; folio (312 × 242 mm, 12¼ x 9½ in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure by Ganymed, Berlin; foxing to edges and to plain endpapers, green cloth-covered boards, spine titled in gilt, lightly dulled, upper side titled and with a design after one of the photographs in gilt, lightly bowed, black-and-white photo-illustrated dust-jacket, worn and torn with internal repair to lower panel, an excellent copy with a good dust-jacket, in a custom green cloth-covered board drop spine box; xvii, [i], 242pp. [With:] the publisher's 4pp prospectus, illustrated with 4 photographs prinbted in gravure. Urformen der Kunst is an important and influential work, a cornerstone of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement in Germany and a consensus highlight of twentieth-century photobook collecting. Karl Blossfeldt had initially trained as a sculptor and, as an amateur botanist, was fascinated by the underlying structures of nature as explored by Ernst Haeckel in Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904). He began photographing plants and flowers against a plain card background in the late 1890s for use at the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum (School of Arts & Crafts), where he taught industrial design and applied arts courses for over thirty years. In his classes, Blossfeldt explored the link between the structure of plants and artistic form, using his photographs to show students how solutions anticipated by nature could be applied to products such as ironwork and wallpaper designs. Blossfeldt's photographs were first exhibited in 1926 at the Nierendorf Gallery, Berlin, where they were shown together with African sculpture to emphasise their primitive and anthropomorphic aspects. Karl Nierendorf helped prepare the work for publication as Urformen der Kunst and contributed to the introduction. Blossfeldt died in December 1932; in his second book of photographs, Wundergarten der Natur, which was published earlier that year, he wrote:' The plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure [nature] is an educator about beauty and intrinsic feeling. My documents of plants shall promote again the unity with nature'. Regards sur un siècle de photographie à travers Le Livre 27; Fotografia Pública: Photography in Print 1919-1939 p59; The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century pp48-9; The Photobook: A History, I p96; The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present 66-7; 802 photo books from the Auer collection p133; Autopsie: Deutschsprachige Fotobücher 1918-1945, I pp188-201.
Seller: Shapero Rare Books, London, United Kingdom
Blossfeldt, Karl. Urformen der Kunst. Berlin, Verlag Ernst Wasmuth, A.G, 1928.
Price: US$5196.44 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: Pleine toile verte décorée et titrée or au dos et sur le premier plat sous jaquette photographique, conservé dans son rare étui d'éditeur imprimé au dos (défauts), 320 x 252 mm. 148 pages, préface de Karl Nierendorf et 120 planches reproduites en héliogravure. Ouvrage fondamental de la nouvelle objectivité, les photographies de Karl Blossfeldt furent montrées pour la première fois en 1926 à la galerie Nierendorf à Berlin. Il les utilisa notamment avec ces élève de lécole des arts et métiers alors quil enseignait le design industriel. Ref: Sinibaldi & Couturier (27); Fotografia Pública p.59; Andrew Roth p.48-49; Parr & Badger I p.96; Open Book p.66-67; M+M Auer p.133; Heiting, & Jaeger I pp.188-201. Etui bruni avec une auréole au niveau du dos et présentant de petites cassures. Jaquette restaurée et doublée avec d'infimes manques au dos. Néanmoins rare ainsi et complet de son étui.
Seller: La Chambre Noire, Lausanne, VD, Switzerland