Count Joseph Potocki (7 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Shelf and handling wear to cover and binding, with general signs of previous use. Boards slightly bowed, betray fading and nicks and other signs of wear and imperfection commensurate with age. Binding is tight and structurally sound. Pages absent any extraneous marks. Sealed in plastic for shipping. Secure packaging for safe delivery.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dustjacket. First Edition. B00073DTGM Hardback. No Dust Jacket. Oversized. First Edition. Leatherbound. Ribbon bookmark slightly frayed. Slight wear to corners and edges. Slight rubbing on spine. Otherwise Tight, sound, unmarked in Very Good condition. No Signature.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No dustjacket as issued. First THUS. Leather bound edition with gilt lettering & decoration showing minor shelf wear on corners, edges & spine. All edge gilt lightly scuffed & scratched. Text and images unmarked. Includes fold out map tipped in at rear. PRIORITY SHIPPING PROVIDED IN THE USA FOR THE PRICE OF MEDIA MAIL SHIPPING.

Full leather. Condition: Very good. No dust jacket. Reprint of this classic work.

Full-Leather. Condition: Fine. No Jacket. xix, 136 pp. Dark brown leather-covered boards with gilt titles, decorations, and page edges. An apparently unread copy.

First English edition, limited to 200 numbered copies signed by Rowland Ward, Imperial 4to. (40 x 32 cm. approx.), vii, 140 pp., coloured portrait frontispiece, 18 photogravure plates (5 double-page), 58 coloured, and 7 monochrome illustrations in text after Piotr Stachiewicz, coloured folding map, fine modern full red morocco gilt with pictorial gilt block to upper cover to the same design as the original, original Rowland Ward "snakeskin" end-papers, top edge gilt others uncut, a fine example. One of the rarest of big-game books and certainly one of the most luxuriously produced. Potocki (1862-1922), was a renowned big-game hunter and breeder of Arabian horses. He created his own game park at Pilawin which was written about by Richard Lydekker. This provided a wild habitat for the breeding of elk and his success encouraged him to import American and Siberian wapiti, the red deer of the Caucasus, and other animals. He was given a breeding pair of European bison from the royal preserve of Bielowicz, and added a herd of American bison as well. The Pilawin preserve, near the Potocki palace (in present day Ukraine), comprised more than 7,000 acres of forests and meadows enclosed by an eight-foot high wooden paling and was part of a larger forest of some 50,000 acres. The volume commemorates his 1895 safari to the Haud region of Somaliland and then into the Ogaden where the party bagged the 'big five' and numerous antelopes, gazelles, etc. 'Excellent artwork' (Czech). Czech, Africa, page 133.

First edition in English, first published in Polish in 1897, the present edition limited to 200 copies signed by Ward, this copy designated "Presentation Copy No. 4" on the initial blank verso: "One of the rarest of all African big game hunting books" (Czech). Józef Mikolaj Potocki (1862-1922) inherited extensive estates in his native Poland, which he much improved with forestation and farming projects. He established an Arabian stud at the family palace at Antoniny, now in the Ukraine, which provided Skowronek, the foundation stallion of Lady Wentworth's renowned Crabbet Arabian Stud. Potocki was a prodigious art collector and bibliophile, amassing a library of some 20,000 volumes, all lost when the house was looted during the Polish-Bolshevik War in 1919. Potocki also underwrote a number of expeditions to India, Ceylon, the Sudan, and in 1895 to Somaliland. "Potocki and his comrades travelled to Somaliland's Haud region, then into Ogaden. The party bagged elephant, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, aoul, gazelle, hartebeest and beisa (oryx). The excellent artwork in the book is from the talented Polish illustrator Piotr Stachiewicz". Clearly a vanity project, sparing no expense, this "sumptuous work" was printed using the most innovative and expensive processes, the text printed on coated art paper with spot illustration in colour throughout. The plates are photogravures on india paper. The frontispiece, a wonderful portrait of the author, is a colour photogravure printed in facsimile of a water-colour sketch by the distinguished Viennese studio of J. Löwy, photographer to the imperial and royal courts. Czech p.133 Folio. Tissue-guarded coloured photogravure portrait frontispiece, and 18 photogravures printed on india paper and mounted on light card leaves hinged with linen, 5 of them double page, all but 2 of the latter with the original tissue-guards, numerous illustrations to the text, some full-page, most tinted, large folding hand-coloured map, title page in red and black. Original light tan pictorial buckram, title gilt to spine and front board, image of "Our Biggest Lion" in black to front board, embossed snakeskin effect endpapers, linen hinges. A little rubbed and soiled, spine mildly tanned, some foxing as usual, particularly to the photogravures and associated tissue-guards, list of illustrations has been loose now reattached, but soiled at the margins and with a few splits, remains very good.