De Lesseps, Tauni (2 results)

Soft cover. Condition: Good. 1st Edition. Slim, stitched sales catalog issued by jeweler F.J. Cooper, Inc. No date; but inside is a short list of the artist's shows which ends in 1967. 12 pages. Bound in sepia cover stock with burn orange title label on front side. End-papers also burnt orange; the illustrated catalog pages are black & white on semi-glossy stock. A price-list insert (with "First Edition" noted) was clipped to top edge of the interior pages - now laid in at front of book. The covers are sunned. Other than a stain left by the clip to the price list, there are no marks or writing to book.

Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Tauni de Lesseps (illustrator). 1st Edition. First Edition (NAP). If you are fond of horses (and drawing) you're going to adore this book. Very fanciful, very, very fanciful. Who knew horses could golf, fish, paint, sunbathe, bathtub bathe, pitch and hit, consume alcohol, throw footballs, dive into pools, dance, play the harp, the violin, the tambourine, ski, rock climb, hunt, farm, gamble, and that's only the half of it. The artist has captured the horse engaged in all of these activities. The horse even bound the book. He/she did a very good job. All the pages are nicely tight from cover to cover. There is an acetate jacket original to the creation of the book, also a black cloth spine. The covers are in very nice condition, clean, with only the tiniest bit of wear. The pages are all nicely bright and perfectly clean. Scrolling through, I'm not finding any soiling (there are two speck-sized spots on the middle page edge). I'm not seeing any conspicuous creasing, there's a tiny little crease just above the tip of the bottom corner of some early pages, a little nick at the top edge of the Introduction page. There are no tears. There are no markings. No attachments. And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere. The author states that she was born a 'horse-freak', her first words were 'da da', which in French is baby-talk for 'horse.' She writes 'These cartoons started years ago, in an attempt to make my ailing mother laugh. They went over like a lead balloon, but I never discarded them and eventually did a few in lacquer paintings, which are on the cover and at intervals in the book. My only hope is that horsemen will be more receptive than my parents. And-- I, for one, have always loved them.' Tauni de Lesseps was a well-known international artist. She was a Paris-born countess, the granddaughter of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the famous engineer and designer of the Suez and Panama canals. She was the daughter of the late Jacques de Lesseps, a much decorated French aviator and war hero and Grace Mackenzie de Lesseps. Her sculpture and paintings cover a wide field, both in subject matter and media, and appear in many distinguished collections, embassies, banks, firms, museums and private clubs around the world. She conducted many 'one-man' shows of her work in the best galleries of New York, Florida, Rome, Florence, Vienna and Old San Juan, Puerto Rico in the 1960's and 1970's. She has three bronzes in the White House and her work is included in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. She is included in the Dictionary of International Biography and Who's Who in American Art. Countess de Lesseps was invested as Dame of Justice of the Order of the Knights of Malta for her work as a co-founder of the original clinic for rehabilitation of the disfigured in New York. She was a consultant to the National Art Museum of Sport and was honored as a Presidential Councillor of Cornell University. She was a member of the River Club in New York, the Everglades Club in Palm Beach, Florida, the Round Hill Club and Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich.