Collecting the Counter Culture - Maggs’ Carl Williams pays a visit to Harvard’s Houghton Library
- by Susan Halas
Carl Williams heads the Counter Culture Department at Maggs, London (courtesy Dazed Digital).
Carl Williams is “stoked” to be speaking at Harvard.
The London based Maggs Bros. specialist is making a visit to Houghton Library on Wed., November 14 to give a talk on collecting the counter culture. (See event details at the end.)
Though the American surfer slang sounds unlikely overlaid with a broad English accent, there is no denying his enthusiasm for his subject and his pleasure at being asked.
Equally unlikely is the pairing for two of the book world’s most venerable and posh institutions to focus on popular culture in all its many low-brow manifestations.
Edward Maggs, the head of the firm himself, strongly refuted the idea that there is anything stuffy, much less retro or backward about the high end booksellers founded by his ancestor in 1853. “We do cutting edge things all the time,” he said on the line from London.
Mr. Maggs (“Call me Ed”) pointed out the company issued catalogs of the avant-garde in the 1920s and “offered the French symbolist poets in the 1930s.”About the same time it was a leader in the collecting of Women’s Literature." “At Maggs, we look forward, not back,” he said.
It’s the Boomer Demographic
Guest and host agree there is broad and growing interest in the field where punk and posh meet. “It is demographic…and only likely to get stronger as the boomers age,” Williams said. “Like other generations they’re collecting what they remember of their youth.”
Leslie Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at the Houghton Library said the impetus for the invitation came from the deposit of more than 50,000 items related to psychedelics, chemistry and botanicals in all forms assembled by Julio Mario Santo Domingo, a Columbian businessman. The collection was deposited by the family with Harvard after his death in 2009.
“This is a major collection,” she said, “and it will definitely fill in many of the gaps in our holdings.”
Swann, May 15: Lot 4: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Z Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague: Obzina, 1929. First trade edition, signed by the artist. $4,000 to $6,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 10: Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology, with a tipped-in A.L.S. to Karl Marx's niece, 1934. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 14: Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845. First edition. $4,000 to $6,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 17: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, inscribed first edition, 1959. $2,000 to $3,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 28: Margaret Hill Morris, Private Journal Kept during a Portion of the Revolutionary War, for the Amusement of a Sister, 1836. First edition. $3,000 to $4,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 38: Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, 1877. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 43: Gertrude Stein, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, signed presentation copy with photograph of Stein, 1912. First edition. $8,000 to $12,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 48: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, first edition in the scarce dust jacket, 1927. $6,000 to $8,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 54: Katherine Dunham, large archive of material from her attorney, 1951-53. $20,000 to $30,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 55: Margaret Fuller Signed Autograph Letter, New York City, 1846. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 92: Sonia Delaunay, illus. & Tristan Tzara, Juste Present, deluxe edition with original gouache, 1961. $20,000 to $25,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 93: Flor Garduño, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, 2006. Limited edition. $6,000 to $8,000.
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