Featured Item of the Week: Ett Hem

As many of you may have heard, we recently acquired a large private collection of deluxe illustrated children’s books from the late 19^th and early 20^th century. In addition to works by Arthur Rackham, Alastair, and Dulac, the collection includes several large, oblong books by the Swedish illustrator Carl Larsson. One that particularly caught my eye was Ett Hem (A Home), an album of watercolors of Lilla Hyttnäs, Larsson’s cottage in Sundborn, Sweden.

Ett Hem was Larsson's second book. Due to its numerous large, full-color illustrations, this first edition of Ett Hem, published by the Swedish firm Bonniers, was only produced in a very small, expensive print run. As such, they are now uncommon. However, a German version of the book published in 1909 became an instant bestseller and brought the Larssons international recognition.

In the introduction to Ett Hem, Larsson describes how this country cottage gave him a sense of peace and seclusion that he had previously only felt while he was in the French countryside, where he spent time in an artists’ colony. Larsson’s father-in-law gave him the cottage in 1888, and he and his wife, Karin, immediately set about transforming it into their dream home. He writes that he wanted his home to be decorated exactly according to his taste, with every detail just right, otherwise he wouldn’t be happy and his work would suffer.

The results of this labor of love are documented in Ett Hem, which was published just over ten years later. The illustrations reveal a home that is practically a work of art in itself, and yet, is cozy, comfortable, and lovingly lived-in. In a painting of the living room, the family dog naps on a rumpled rug and newspaper pages are strewn on the sofa. The artist’s own studio is filled with orderly clutter: canvases in various states and rolls of fabric lean against the wall, and his work table is covered with papers, boxes of paint, and vases of fresh wildflowers. The Larssons’ home celebrates an Arts and Crafts-inspired handmade aesthetic, decorated throughout with bright murals and artwork on the walls, cheerful, homemade blue-striped slipcovers on hand-me-down furniture, and bold textiles designed, woven, embroidered, and printed by Karin, who also had a background in art. Larsson’s watercolors pay tribute not only to the cottage itself, but to his family (who appear in many of the illustrations, going about their daily activities), and the landscape and community surrounding them.

In a profile of the artist's home, Anna Hoffman, of Apartment Therapy, writes, "The Larssons' aesthetic owed a lot to the writings of William Morris, who also espoused a return to simplicity, to handcraft and to natural beauty. These qualities not only helped define the direction of Scandinavian design in the 20th century, but is still deeply influential today." Lilla Hyttnäs is now a museum, preserved as an example of ground-breaking Swedish interior design. The cottage still looks almost exactly as it was depicted in Carl Larsson's watercolors. However, Ett Hem captures something that no museum ever could: what everyday life was like for the artist and his family at home.

For more information on this book, please visit our website.

War and Innocence

One of the reasons the Iliad and Odyssey continue to be relevant after 4000 years is because they depict the lengthy, fraught process of going to and returning from war. It is a process, to be sure: from the moment Iphigenia is sacrificed (all part of a mythology with which Homer's audience would have been familiar), the innocence of that society was lost. Achilles, he of the legendary brooding and rage, knew he could not return to life before; and Odysseus had to undergo a gradual shedding of his war-time instincts (his "dissembling") in order to reclaim his home and family.

Among the beautiful and significant illustrated books and other works that comprise our latest printed catalogue, there is a four-page letter with a drawing that was sent by a young soldier to an eight-year-old girl from western Massachusetts. The letter was sent in response to a care package that Agnes Isabelle Munson sent through her church in South Deerfield. Charles Kauffman, a soldier with the 2nd Heavy Artillery, 112th Pennsylvania Regiment, reveals in this letter that he had been serving in the Union army since the age of fifteen. And although Kauffman assures his reader that he was "not sick or wonded" (sic), he does describe the war as cruel, and his depictions of captured confederate soldiers indicate that he had grown up tremendously during his two-year enlistment.

When I spotted this letter at an antiques show over the summer, I did not immediately think of the siege of Troy, but because these works held such a prominent place in my literary background this may have been what compelled me to purchase it. This letter, written by a seventeen-year-old Union soldier just two months before the surrender at Appomatox, with its naive and strangely compelling drawing of a girl or young woman holding a rabbit, is nothing less than an act of rejoining society.

Announcing a New Catalogue

Catalogue 137, with a selection of deluxe illustrated children's books from a recently acquired private collection, contains fifty-two items, including a copy of Arthur Rackham's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with an original ink and watercolor drawing; an extraordinary illuminated manuscript on vellum of The Song of Songs, from the collection of a prominent Talmudic scholar; a powerful German linocut calendar from 1969 that pays tribute to the African-American Civil Rights Movement; and much more.

Printed in full color, copies are available upon request, via email, phone, or mail. A PDF version, with links to item descriptions and photographs, is available on our website. Please let us know if you have any questions, and we hope you enjoy the latest offering from Bromer Booksellers!