Oberammergau; Etched by Bernhardt Wall
[New Preston]: Bernhardt Wall, 1922. Octavo (8 5/8 inches tall), original green mottled paper boards, printed paper label to front board, green cloth spine, uncut. Sympathetic restoration to top spine, slight toning and edge-wear to boards, minor damp-stain along upper fore-edge. A near-fine copy. Item #1300
"ACROSS THE WORLD THEY FIND THEIR WAY / CHRIST WILL BE CRUCIFIED TODAY"
Limited "Author's Edition"—one of only 50 copies—of this illustrated tribute to Oberammergau's 400 year-old "Passion-Spiel." Entirely illustrated throughout with 17 etchings, this collaboration between Leonora Speyer and Bernhardt Wall is further distinguished as one of only three "Etcher's Copies." An exceptional copy with an early bookseller's catalogue description laid-in at the back.
The Oberammergau Passion Play has been performed on open-air stages in the Bavarian village since 1634. As the plague raged across Europe in 1633, the villagers of Oberammergau promised to reenact the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ if the village was spared further deaths. Oberammergau was indeed spared by God and the first Passion Play took place the next year—and every ten years since. Leonora Speyer began writing poetry after she and her husband, the banker Edgar Speyer, arrived in New York from London in 1915. A pioneer etcher and a producer of fine books, Bernhardt Wall started his career as a lithographic illustrator but he is perhaps best known for his Western etchings (witness his colophon) as well as biographies of prominent Americans such as Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Jackson. The etchings, most including text with image, are printed on rectos and protected with tissue-guards. The first etched page, the Limitation Page, states that this is the first edition, first printing of 50 copies, with the pencil signatures of both Wall and Speyer. Not only is this copy signed by both Speyer and Wall on the limitation page, there is an additional pencil note by Wall on the blank flyleaf: "one of 3 copies / for sale / BW" and another note by him in ink on the flyleaf: "This poem won the / Blindman Prize in / 1923. / B.W." (with a decoration below his initials. With an etched Dedication to the author's husband, "To Edgar / for Christmas 1922 / lovingly given."
Price: $750.00