Barry Moser: Elkind Collection

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

and

Through the Looking Glass

Arnold and Mimi Elkind were among America’s premier Fine Press Book collectors. Their collection focused on living printers, bookbinders, and book designer artists, particularly artists who had maintained their own presses; In the 1980s the Elkinds entered into several limited partnerships to produce fine press editions. Among the private press books they collected were examples from Angelica Press, Kelmscott Press, Rampant Lions’ Press, Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press, and Alan Robinson’s Cheloniidae Press. The Elkinds were particular patrons of the Barry Moser’s Pennyroyal Press.

We are proud to be able to offer the Elkind’s Pennyroyal edition copies of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Along with the issued bindings in three-quarter morocco stamped in gilt, housed in publisher’s matching leather-backed clamshell boxes and separate suites of loose pencil signed etchings in linen folders (Adventures in Wonderland has 72 full page plates and 3 folding plates as issued, and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There has 93 plates), these one-of-a- kind individualized volumes include an additional sketch on each colophon, 6 full page signed sketches, signatures by printer Arthur Larsen and bookbinder Gray Parrot, and matching clamshell boxes and cloth cases with the 150 Premiers Epreuves (the first proof of each block) signed on newsprint. This was Moser’s magnum opus that launched his career into fine limited-edition publishing. Alice was sold out upon issue and received the 1983 American Book Award for Design and Illustration.