Books

First edition, limited presentation issue, inscribed by the author on the recipient's presentation page to Henri Vever, one of the preeminent European jewellers of the age and a pioneering collector of Islamic and Asian art: "Bon souvenir d'impressions communes, Hugues Krafft". This is an excellent association copy of Krafft's spectacular, award-winning visual record of the region. Krafft's inscription, which can be rendered as "happy remembrance of shared impressions", reflects the two men's infatuation with the region. In 1891, Vever travelled to Samarkand, Bukhara, and other cities, where he became entranced by the brilliance and richness of Islamic art. With fellow-collector Georges Marteau, he organized the first exhibition on the art of the Islamic book in Paris in 1912. Krafft and Vever were friends of the art dealer Samuel Bing. Raymond Koechlin, a professor at the École des Sciences Politiques, wrote that Bing opened his home "with the most amicable good will. A small group gathered around him that he invited for dinner parties in the privacy of his home. [French historian] Gaston Migeon was part of the group... [and] Hugues Krafft who had come back from the Far East; and always Vever and [the collector Charles] Gillot" (Koechlin, p. 22-3). Hugues Krafft (1853-1935) was the son of a German businessman who moved to Reims intending to enter the Champagne trade. Hugues senior, a tireless traveller and polyglot, joined the House of Louis Roederer as a first edition, limited presentation issue, inscribed by the author on the recipient's presentation page to Henri Vever, one of the preeminent European jewellers of the age and a pioneering collector of Islamic and Asian art: "Bon souvenir d'impressions communes, Hugues Krafft". This is an excellent association copy of Krafft's spectacular, award-winning visual record of the region. Krafft's inscription, which can be rendered as "happy remembrance of shared impressions", reflects the two men's infatuation with the region. In 1891, Vever travelled to Samarkand, Bukhara, and other cities, where he became entranced by the brilliance and richness of Islamic art. With fellow-collector Georges Marteau, he organized the first exhibition on the art of the Islamic book in Paris in 1912. Krafft and Vever were friends of the art dealer Samuel Bing. Raymond Koechlin, a professor at the École des Sciences Politiques, wrote that Bing opened his home "with the most amicable good will. A small group gathered around him that he invited for dinner parties in the privacy of his home. [French historian] Gaston Migeon was part of the group... [and] Hugues Krafft who had come back from the Far East; and always Vever and [the collector Charles] Gillot" (Koechlin, p. 22-3). Hugues Krafft (1853-1935) was the son of a German businessman who moved to Reims intending to enter the Champagne trade. Hugues senior, a tireless traveller and polyglot, joined the House of Louis Roederer as a rather grand overseas representative and was vital in that business's massive expansion in the latter part of the 19th century, a period when they created Cristal for Tsar Alexander II. Hugues junior inherited his father's wanderlust, but not his love of a deal, and spent his life travelling the world recording the places and people that he visited - he was the first to use instantaneous photography during his visit to Japan in 1882-83 - and accumulating a massive collection of ethnographic artefacts, now housed at the Hôtel le Vergeur Museum in Reims. The present work relates to a tour undertaken across what is today Uzbekistan. Having crossed the Caucasus with respected antiquary the Baron de Baye a year or so earlier, Krafft secured the necessary introductions - among them to such major figures of the Great Game as Count Nicolai Ignatiev, political agent at Bokhara, and General Federov, military governor of Samarkand - to enable him to make his projected tour into the recently annexed Khanates of Russian Turkestan. The result is a spectacular visual record, accompanied by an authoritative text, and produced to the very highest standards of French publishing of the day. A Travers was reviewed in the Royal Geographical Society's Geographical Journal (Vol. XIX, No. 6) by Willi Rickmer Rickmers, the German geologist and explorer who had travelled to Bokhara and Samarkand in 1894-6, explored the mountains of Eastern Bokhara in 1896-8, and was later to carry out groundbreaking surveys in the Pamirs. Rickmers explains he has "a difficult task before him - the necessity of praising without reserve." The text is "a well-written, simple, and straightforward account of the country," which he recommends as "a most reliable introduction to the study of the region, and a perfectly safe guide to future visitors." As to the pictorial part, "one can hardly speak with too much enthusiasm"; "I have wandered through the crowded streets of Bokhara city, and my eyes have dwelt on the stately mosques of Samarkand. M Krafft reproduces these scenes for me as none have done before... When the artist touches the chord, memory responds." The images portray the remarkable scenery of the region and pay considerable attention to the unique architecture, but most strongly represented are portraits. "The portraits are splendid... Dwellings, dress, and occupations are depicted with exhaustive thoroughness, and we are instructed in every detail of the day's work or pleasure. Many are rare views, so difficult to obtain, of religious ceremonies, of crowds and festivities, or of the demi-monde of Samarkand." Rickmers concludes on an elegiac note: "The day may come when the brilliant hues on the khalat of the Bokhariot merchant shall yield to European uniformity of costume, or when the courtesan of Baikabak will wear last year's spring fashions from Paris. Then the full importance, the immense value of M. Krafft's beautiful book will be appreciated with tenfold intensity by those who came too late to have seen the days of old, and by those who can still recall them." Krafft's use of instantaneous photography, a term common in the 19th century, is interesting, as it allowed him to move away, particularly regarding portraiture, from the inevitably staid studio tableaux. "The earliest photographic processes normally required exposures of many seconds, or even minutes, rendering the photography of movement impossible. However, with the right combination of lighting, subject, lens and plate size, exposures of a fraction of a second, while still very difficult to achieve, were possible" (Harding). His images are here rendered in superb and finely detailed photogravure (héliogravure) by Paul Dujardin (1843-1913), one of the leading exponents of the craft. This copy includes a slip inserted at the half-title, noting that the book won the Médaille d'Or du Prix Léon Dewez de la Société de Géographie de Paris and was "couronne par l'Academie Francaise" (crowned by l'Academie Francaise). Folio (343 x 245 mm). Presentation binding of dark red russia, yellow morocco label with onlay lettering in red and gilt and with ornate filigree embossed metal cartouches, gilt leather head- and tailbands, inset panels on both boards in green sheep, covers with similar metal cartouches, endpapers in an Uzbek fabric pattern, top edge gilt, others uncut, red silk bookmarker. Photogravure portrait frontispiece of Krafft, 69 similar plates with captioned tissue guards, folding coloured map at end, 94 illustrations of equal quality in the text. Slightly rubbed, a few scuffs and judicious repairs, covers sunned at head, occasional finger soiling, internally clean and bright. A very good copy, with printed slip inserted at the half-title, noting that the book won the Médaille d'Or du Prix Léon Dewez de la Société de Géographie de Paris and was "couronne par l'Academie Francaise" (crowned by l'Academie Francaise). Yakushi (1994) K316. Colin Harding, "I is for Instantaneous: Capturing Movement for the First Time", National Science + Media Museum website; Raymond Koechlin, Souvenirs d'un vieil amateur d'art de l'Extrême Orient, 1930.