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Artia, Published 1960. Hardcover, 72 pp., [50] pp. of plates; 26.5 x 21 cm; text in French; illustrated with a color frontispiece and 49 color plates, pink floral borders throughout text pages, pictorial endpapers reproducing Persian calligraphy. Photographs by Werner Forman; text by Vera Kubickova; translated by Jeanne Reverseau; graphic arrangement by Bedrich Forman.
In Very Good condition with a Good dust jacket. Pictorial paper-covered boards with cream pebbled cloth spine, gilt lettering on spine. Mild shelf and edge wear, hint of color loss to corner tips, toning to head and tail of spine and light soiling to spine cloth. Binding tight. Some foxing and toning to endpapers and to the leaf with the publisher's device; foxing to edges of text block; otherwise pages unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket matching the boards shows several chips and tears of an inch or less along edges, mild to moderate overall toning, shelf and edge wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Color reproductions of Persian miniatures and calligraphy from the collections of the Gulistan Palace Library and the Archaeological Museum in Tehran, with an introduction, descriptive catalogue of the plates and bibliography by Vera Kubickova. Plates include miniatures from an early 15th-century Herat manuscript of Kalila et Dimna, the Shah-nameh calligraphed by Mirza Dja'far Baysunghuri (833 h.), pages from a Khamseh manuscript, calligraphic leaves signed by Sultan Ali (with quatrains of Omar Khayyam) and Mir Ali, and 19th-century portraits. Boards and jacket reproduce a 16th-century lacquer binding from a manuscript of Jami's Silsilat al-Dhahab.