Kay Nielsen. East of the Sun and West of the Moon, 1914.

Kay Nielsen. EAST OF THE SUN AND WEST OF THE MOON. Old Tales from the North. Hodder & Stoughton, London 1914.


Current Selling Prices
$2500-$20000 /£1200-£10000

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
One of the great works from what is now known as 'the golden age of book illustration.' This was from about 1905 to 1930. It is sometimes said that the rising costs of producing these elaborate illustrated books finished them off, certainly by the 1930s there was less money about and these books were always expensive. They started to become expensive again in the 1960s and by the 1970s they were seriously collected. Ancient auction records reveal the venerable Charing Cross bookseller Joseph's paying £4 for a copy of the signed limited edition (500 numbered copies) in October 1950. By 1960 they were paying about £6 - but in 1974 we see them paying £85 for a copy of the ordinary edition. By that time the great promoters of these standard Illustrated books were the fabulous Harrington brothers then selling out of an antique arcade on the King's Road. All early auction results show Joseph's as almost the only buyers of Nielsen (and all the other "Golden Age' illustrators.) Joseph's expert David Brass eventually segued to Heritage in Los Angeles which, for a time, became the epicentre of illustrated book collecting.

In the early 1970s I was selling books from a barrow on the Portobello Road and every other punter wanted 'Dulac, Rackham, Nielsen' possibly in the mistaken idea we had never heard of them and would knock them out for a fiver each. Also in the great canon of desired illustrators was Heath Robinson, Charles Robinson, the Detmolds, Jessie M King (my favourite) Willy Pogany, Harry Clarke and bringing up the rear Rene Bull, Warwick Goble and dog man Cecil Aldin. They also wanted 'The Ship that Sailed to Mars' by William Timlin and, from an earlier age, Beardsley and Beerbohm.



Kay Nielsen 1886 - 1957 (his name is pronounced Kye as in Rye) was a Danish born artist who studied art in Paris. His artistic influences must include John Bauer, the great Swedish fairy tale artist. Echoes of his forests and trees lurk in the backgrounds of many of Nielsen's paintings. He was also a follower of Art Nouveau and The Birmingham School, as exemplified by Jessie M. King. Other inputs include Hiroshige and Beardsley. Houfe in his magisterial 'Dictionary of British Book Illustrators' adds:

'...he was a brilliant colourist and a highly decorative illustrator, his works formed into frieze-like patterns, are closest to Middle Eastern designs and therefore akin to Leon Bakst or Edmund Dulac. He uses stippling effects and elaborate rococo motifs which are reminiscent of Beardsley, but also the swirling lines of Vernon Hill and the more sculptural lines of incipient art deco...'

Good to see Vernon Hill mentioned - his astonishing work is hardly known today. Houfe lists many 100s of interesting illustrators but the majority of collectors are only interested in about a dozen bankable names. Other collectable illustrators include this random Britcentric selection-- Austin Spare, Frank Pape, Beresford Egan, Horton, Alasdair, Bosschere, Jack B Yeats, Rex Whistler, Marie Laurencin, Frans Masereel, W.T. Horton, William Strang, Robert Gibbings, Balthus, Edward Wadsworth, William Nicholson, Edward Burra, Eric Gill, McKnight Kauffer, Lucian Freud, John Minton, Keith Vaughann, Glyn Philpot, Gwen Raverat, Eric Ravilious, Fougasse, Fish, Bawden, Phil May, Ronald Searle, H.M. Bateman, David Jones, etc., etc.,

VALUE? A 'very fine copy' made $27,000 + commission in 2000, in the same year a soiled copy made $13000 with commission. One imagine the silk ties were present in the former copy. Three copies of the limited are currently for sale between $20,000 and $30,000, none fine. Vellum tends to soil or brown with age, so fine copies are things of wonder. The ordinary trade edition (blue) is much prized - it is undated but known to be 1914 and it is hard to find a bright copy for less than £1000. A copy in a modern cloth facsimile binding is a 'Buy it Now' at Ebay at £1450. This kind of binding renewal is unpromising and forces the collector to always have to admit its presence because of its unnatural newness. Nielsen illustrations, presumably broken from his books are said to go for 'hundreds of dollars' - also on Ebay.

Outlook? Auction results indicate a slight softening of his prices, Heritage with its meretricious shop on Melrose stuffed with Rackhams is no more, but the vogue for collecting standard Golden Age illustrated books shows no real sign of abating. However some cash rich book collectors, a fickle bunch, may have now moved on to modern first editions, classic literature, fine bindings and photography.

Arthur Rackham - Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

J.M. Barrie / Arthur Rackham. PETER PAN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. Hodder & Stoughton, London 1906.

Current Selling Prices
$1000-$2500 /£500-£1200

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS / CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Handsome russet quarto lettered gilt and with 50 colour plates - illustrations that made Arthur Rackham famous and turned his Illustrated books into a publishing phenomenon. Tens of thousands of his books were sold over the next 30 years from Poe to Swinburne, Hans Andersen to Shakespeare. It used to be said that a dealer with a big enough check book could fill a pantechnicon full of Rackham just going round the shops of Southern England. The essential thing about Rackham is that you can sell him for big bucks to people who, up to that moment, had never heard of him --often the most they had ever spent on a book. Several venerable businesses are based on sales of Rackham (+ Dulac, Nielsen, Heath Robinson and Jessie M King). Country houses used to have shelves of Rackhams (often in the billiard room) piled up with the Punches and Badminton Library for guests to browse on rainy afternoons.

There are even experts on Rackham, although now the whole thing can be learnt in about an hour. The biggest collector in the UK is Michael Winner- the man they love to hate, and a man not possessed of the taste of, say, Bernard Berenson. Rackham is 'eye candy' - it is hard to deny his charm and skill but the whole thing has been done to death. Ebay is full of the stuff making good prices but quite a bit less than he was making 3 years ago. He is hard to buy from the public--with deceased estates the family often keep the Rackhams and nothing else and even to a person who hardly knows a book from a chicken brick they look valuable. The vellum limited editions are much prized--the one of 500 signed from 1906 in unsoiled vellum can command £4000 and more.

The Peter Pan chapters of Barrie's The Little White Bird (1902) were re-issued in 1906 as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. The story has resonated so much that there is a beautiful and much visited bronze statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. For some London visitors it is their first port of call and it is close by where the four foot deep fields of tribute flowers to Diana were laid in the sad September of 97. A contemporary review of this book published in "The World" reads "Mr Barrie has done what no one else has done since the inventor of "Alice", he has invented a new legend, a modern folk story which comprehends all the innermost secrets of the modern child, be he four or forty. Mr Rackham, for his part, has been bewitched in his cradle: he does not dream of fairies or hobgoblins, he knows them."



VALUE? If you are lucky you can find an unproblematic copy of the work for about £500, if you are Rackham crazy you can fork out £10,000 + for the unwieldy Peter Pan Portfolio, where in the edition of 20 copies every plate is signed and sometimes for a few dollars more you get a drawing. I am told that Rackham prices have peaked and certainly they are not the assured fast seller they used to be unless you underprice them. This is either due to a shift in taste or the plethora of books going through Ebay some fetching 'bottom feeder' prices.

TRIVIA. The lovely Rackham plate below is entitled 'There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf' --he was especially good with trees and fairies- also gnarled roots, goblins and witches. The English have a special love of leaves--I'm thinking of Hopkins poem 'Margaret are you grieving/ Over Goldengrove unleaving' and Vita Sackville West who identified those minor pleasures in life that everyone experiences from time to time as 'through leaves', after the small but intense pleasure of walking through dry leaves and kicking them up as you go. A little Bloomsbury Press, not at all precious, calls itself 'The Through Leaves Press.' [ W/Q ** ]