Catalogue 250 and a Change of Pace from Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller

Jonathan A Hill Bookseller has reached a magic catalogue number, or at least a round one. Offered is Catalogue 250. Hill noted that it took only 47 years to get here. Today's word is perseverance. Yoshi Hill notes that this catalogue has “surprising aesthetic and thematic shifts between items: mica-sprinkled scrolls, to photographic postcards, Art and Project Bulletin to books printed by woodblocks...” Frequently, Jonathan Hill catalogues are collections of Japanese works with maybe some Korean or Chinese. This catalogue too has many Japanese works, but it expands into other territories this time. Yoshi Hill explains, “We will not claim there is a unifying theme connecting them all, except that this range represents the fields the three of us (the Hill family) have gravitated towards of late.” So, here are some samples, ones you might expect in a Hill catalogue and others you would not.

Edward Ruscha is a creative visual artist who has been producing paintings, drawings, and photographs for the past half century. He is particularly noted for his books with collections of photographs of seemingly ordinary subjects that he brings to life. For example, his photographs of Twentysix Gasoline Stations or Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Item 43 is not itself one of his artworks. Rather, it is a poster catalogue of his first ten artist's books, all but the two most recent (at the time) depicted in black and white photographs. They include updated prices, apparently in Dutch guilders, such as they were around 1970, the presumed publication date since the latest book was published in that year. The images appear in two horizontal rows and are often found cut into two horizontal sheets (this one is still intact). Priced at $2,750.

Is a coloring book a work of art? This one played an important role in the home of Mexican artist and writer Ulises Carrion. However, he was neither the creator nor artist of this coloring book. The title is Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan kleur-boek. Hill describes the book as “one of the most compelling books we have handled, and a truly remarkable discovery.” It was produced in Amsterdam circa 1970s and the artists/colorists were Carrion's guests. Carrion had moved there after graduation and stayed for the remainder of his relatively short life (48 years). He had his friends and acquaintances color a page when they visited him. There are around 180 “hand-colored” illustrations. Dates range from 1973-1984 and the guests have signed or added comments, jokes, dialogues, etc. They have used pens or crayons. A separate list kept mostly by Carrion names the artists of the roughly 180 colorings. They are people who came to Amsterdam to participate in the vibrant art scene of that open city. Item 8. $25,000.

I'm not sure whether Keith A. Smith can be called the author of this book. If so, it was the easiest and most quickly written book ever. The only text is the title, Book 91. Keith Smith is an artist, and some of his books are books as art, not books as text. Smith has taken the blank pages inside and punched carefully arranged holes in them. Through the holes, he has fitted pieces of linen string. Smith explains, “This book deals with cast light and shadows...” When opened, with a light source at a specified distance and angle from the book, the holes create spots of light on the facing page. “The focus of these spots varies according to the distance from the page to the surface upon which they are cast.” Turning the page changes the focus of the spots on the facing page. They move and change as the page is turned. This book made such an impression, Hill explains, that it “is one of the most highly sought-after American artists' books,” being held in the collections of the Library of Congress, Bibiotheque Nationale of France, The Getty, Harvard University, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and New York Public Library. Item 49. $50,000.

Fires have traditionally been a major problem in Japan. Probably some combination of construction materials, inadequate spaces between structures, and lack of easy access to water exacerbated the effects of fire in Japan. One of these not all that uncommon fires was the Great Meiwa Fire of 1772. Meiwa was a time period which included 1772. Edo (now Tokyo) saw numerous devastating fires through the ages, merchant areas suffering major fires 31 times in two centuries, four of them citywide. The fire of 1772 was one of the particularly bad ones. Thousands of structures were destroyed and almost 15,000 people died. Another 4,000 were missing. Item 12 is a scroll depicting the 1772 fire in Edo. It is a long panorama divided into three sections – the alarm, the fire, and the aftermath. We see firefighters rushing to the fire, merchants prepare for fire, servants remove merchandise from its path, water is drawn from wells, the elderly are carried away, a bridge is filled by firefighters going to the fire while in the other direction residents escape. In the second scene firefighters bring water buckets, climb ladders, and we see the fires themselves in vivid colors. Firefighters later survey the damage as small fires continue to burn. Finally, we see the beginning of reconstruction, carpenters rebuilding, merchants returning with goods, residents returning to surviving homes. This scroll was copied from earlier ones in 1842. $19,500.

Item 13 is a hand-colored woodblock print of a ship by Shihei Hayashi from 1782. It is mounted on a hanging scroll with a wooden roller and cord. It is a beautiful image but beauty was not its purpose. The purpose was to shock. The ship waves a flag of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company. Hayashi toured Japan and feared the isolationist nation had little understanding of the outside world, leaving it vulnerable to foreign attack. He wrote a lengthy book on the subject and used funds from selling the print to publish his book. Isolationism continued to work for Japan until Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States visited in 1854 and forced Japan to open its doors to trade with America. Item 13. $32,500.

Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller may be reached at 917-294-2678 or jonathan@jonathanahill.com. Their website is www.jonathanahill.com.