This Week in Dover Street: Kay Nielsen, Anders Petersen & Kung-Fu.

This Week in Dover Street: Kay Nielsen, Anders Petersen & Kung-Fu.

Here at Peter Harrington Dover Street we like to showcase the very best in rare books, encompassing everything from the keenest heights of political economy to the most nostalgic depths of children’s literature. There really are some astounding things here and, since it would be a little selfish to keep them all to ourselves, we have decided to share a special selection of three exceptionally interesting items every week with the wider world. I hope you enjoy reading about these books from time to time – you can click through from the picture to the full entry on our website, where you can also browse our entire gallery and rare book stock. Additionally, if you find yourself in the area, please drop by 43 Dover Street and I’d be happy to show you around.

 

 

East of the Sun, West of the Moon by Kay Nielsen

East of the Sun, West of the Moon by Kay Nielsen

 

As White as Snow – a fine copy of the deluxe vellum-bound signed limited edition of Kay Nielsen’s masterpiece, East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

Arthur Rackham is often deferred to as the undisputed king of book illustration, reigning over its Golden Age in the early 20th century, and I would not wish to lay any challenge against his broad, fairy-filled demesne.  However, I would say that it is hard to point to one single Rackham book that stands preeminent above all other illustrated books. Not so with the somewhat lesser known Kay Nielsen, whose masterpiece, East of the Sun, West of the Moon (1914), is in my opinion the great illustrated book of the period. I say this not only because, being myself 1/8th Danish, I have an atavistic yen for all things Scandinavian – but moreover that I feel Nielsen’s extraordinary aesthetic (his “exquisite bizarrerie”, as the Preface has it) combined styles to create something undeniably beautiful and strikingly new. He took the spidery definition of Rackham’s lines, dripped them in the dreamy colours of Dulac, and gave them a formal composition that feels almost Japanese (watch out for Hokusai waves). There is something more extreme about the product than anything in Rackham, moving Nielsen’s work away from the gentle parochialism sometimes associated with book illustration, and towards the realm of book art.

East of the Sun and West of the Moon

East of the Sun and West of the Moon

It should be noted that his painstaking working method demanded he use a four-plate colour process (trumping Rackham’s three), something you can see in the collections of original Nielsen copper plates that we have found and framed.

It is also interesting to know that Nielsen, having exhausted his book-illustrating career in barely 15 years, left for California in 1939 and ended up working for Disney as a concept artist. We are to be grateful for his work on the “Ave Maria” and “Night on Bare Mountain” sequences of the original Fantasia (1940) film, and also for the enthusiastic background work Nielsen did towards a Disney adaptation of his fellow Dane’s classic tale The Little Mermaid, which, though never realised in his lifetime, was resumed when Disney finished the film in 1989. This snow-white copy of the hugely valuable signed limited edition of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, is one of the star items in our brand-new Children’s Catalogue, which is currently on display at 43 Dover Street. Do come by and I’d be more than happy to flick through it with you – in the meantime, here are some of the plates to keep you going.

East of the Sun and West of the Moon East of the Sun and West of the Moon East of the Sun and West of the Moon East of the Sun and West of the Moon

 

 

 

“Until now, we never knew what old wrestlers have done…”, or “HOW TO THROW A HOODLUM UP TO FIFTEEN FEET”

chines kung fu first edition

This dramatically-illustrated series of Kung-Fu pamphlets were issued from Malaysia in 1958. They purport to teach a special brand of Chinese Kung-Fu, “Karato (Atado)”, under the aegis of an Honourable Master Leong Fu, who is boldly trumpeted thus: “Retired undefeated Chinese Kung-Fu champion of the world, the greatest living authority of the ancient Chinese art of self-defence Kung-Fu, conqueror of more than 100 of the world’s best professional Kung-Fu exponents of various styles, schools, sects, caves and monasteries, retired-undefeated world renowned oriental heavyweight champion wrester and founder of the Karato (Atado) system of lightning self-defence.” Inside the individual numbers (the covers of which have fantastic illustrations, one showing a warrior smugly uprooting a tree with his bare hands, another battling a leopard) are plenty of demonstrative figures, and I don’t doubt that following them would lead one to gain a more confident grasp over the art of self-defence than, for example, reading Keats’s Endymion. However, there is something in the phrasing of the descriptions that belies the solemn discipline usually associated with Eastern martial arts mastery, and seems instead to be playing up to the violent paranoia of the 1950s Western city-dweller.

leong fu

Examples include: “Kung Fu Karato Method to Throw out an Unwanted Person Without Causing Any Disturbance During a Party”, “A Clever Move to Make a Bully Who Pushes You on the Chest Cry With Pain and Beg for Mercy”, “How to Deliver A Secret Kung Fu Karato Blow So Hard and Fast That a Punk Will Think That His Head Has Suddenly Exploded”; “How to Paralyze the Breathing Mechanism of an Assailant Who Tries to Kill You With A Wicked Looking Dagger”, “How To Throw a Hoodlum Up To Fifteen Feet”, “How to Snap a Punk’s Ligaments Like Guitar Strings and Make Him Howl with Great Pain”, “How to Smash to Pulp The Nose of a Sadistic Ruffian”, “How to Inflict Serious Injury and Unbearable Pain to a Dangerous ‘Teddy Boy’ who tries to Disfigure you with a Broken Bottle”, “How to Turn the Table on Two Hooligans Who Caught you by Surprise, Force you to the Ground and Attempts to Smash you to a Bloody Mess”, “How to Protect Yourself, Your Girl Friend, Your Wife, Your Children and Those Who Depend on You For Protection from Insults and Attacks by Thugs, Bullies & Maniacs”, the exceptionally filmic, “How to Deal with Kidnappers Who Disguising as Police Officers Performing Their Duties, Tricked you into the Back Seat of a Car between Strong-Armed Thugs”, and the pleasingly general “How to Fight with Sadistic Maniacs”.

kung fu how feet are used

Research into the backstory of this extraordinary production has revealed two interesting aspects. Leong Fu Lee (1932-91) was indeed a martial arts practitioner of Chinese parentage, who opened his own school in Malaysia, teaching his own brand of martial arts amalgamated from various styles (including, apparently, Japanese karate learned from officers who invaded Malaya during WWII). His students included Western servicemen stationed in the Far East after the war. He did have an international wrestling career, and continued to teach into his 50s. His method was disseminated to the English speaking world through productions such as this, and there are apparently still a few practitioners teaching in the UK.

tagets for kung fu chops tou sau

What adds colour to this picture, however, is an April 1968 editorial in the international self-defence magazine Black Belt, attempting to discredit Leong Fu’s claims to world mastery: “With a brightly coloured Malaysian-printed booklet, Leong Fu has been posing as master of the art… let us put you on guard against these claims, one of the many which are cut out to turn your interest in self-defence and the martial arts into an oversize bankroll… From what we have learned, Leong Fu was a moderately successful wrestler and as you know, wrestling today, at least in the professional ranks, is highly suspect as a competitive sport. Old prize fighters have turned into wrestlers, but until now, we never knew what old wrestlers have done… If you get the booklet in the mail, report it to the post office.” I must say I sympathise more with the old wrestler than the supercilious magazine editor.

Still, even if not perhaps wholly creditable, Leong Fu’s original Kung-Fu training series nonetheless constitutes a highly characterful martial arts item, and a rare thing, with no copies recorded in any libraries internationally, and no trade records in the usual channels.

 

“IT WAS OKAY TO BE DESPERATE, TO BE TENDER” – a first edition of Anders Petersen’s Café Lehmitz

photobook1

This is one of my favourite photography books – it captures, with tenderness and style, that rare and elusive innocence that resides (or can reside) in the heart of drunken revelry. Swedish photographer Anders Petersen, for three years in the late 1960s, captured the lives of the denizens of a Hamburg bar – what he produced (presented here in a near-fine copy of the first edition, in the original glassine wrapper) is regarded as a seminal work in the development of European photography, chiefly for its intimacy.

Petersen himself said revealingly of the work: “the people at the Café Lehmitz had a presence and a sincerity that I myself lacked. It was okay to be desperate, to be tender, to sit all alone or share the company of others. There was a great warmth and tolerance in this destitute setting.” If that isn’t cool enough – the front cover was used as the cover of Tom Waits’s 1985 album, Raindogs.