Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám ~ E. Fitzgerald Illust. Hanscom & Cumming 1912, LEATHER

  Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám ~ Edward Fitzgerald; Illustrated by Adelaide Hanscom and Blanche Cumming ~ 1912 ~ SCARCE Art Nouveau Full Leather Binding

 Publisher: Dodge Publishing Company, New York (1912)

Very rare and beautiful copy of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, by Edward Fitzgerald, from 1912. This scarce edition has a finely tooled full brown leather Art Nouveau binding with stylized grave vines on the front board, and the embossed title above. It is described as the "coloured Oriental edition," citing three different bindings: cloth, calf, and full morocco. The volume includes 28 exquisite double-mounted photographs of watercolors of "Persian life-studies" by Adelaide Hanscom (1875-1931), American painter and photographer, who published some of the first books using photography as illustration. The models' costumes were designed by Orlof Orlow. Hanscom's studio and all the negatives for the images in this beautiful volume were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, so the only remaining images from this project are the books themselves.

 The boards and binding are solid and tight with some rubbing and minor shelf-wear. The pages and tipped-in illustrations are crisp, colorful and clean save for a spot of foxing at the bottom corner of the mounting paper on two of the tipped-in plates and their corresponding pages. The plates themselves are crisp, colorful and clean. A beautiful and scarce edition.