Oliver Messel. Stage Designs and Costumes [INSCRIBED]

Oliver Messel. Introduction by James Laver & foreword by Charles B. Cochran.

John Lane. The Bodley Head Limited. London. 1933. First edition. No. 33 of a limited edition of 1,000 numbered copies. Inscribed in ink by Oliver Messel to front free end-paper - 'With all love / for a happy Christmas / to dear Auntie Gladys / Oliver 1933'. White buckram-bound boards, backed with black buckram with white title to spine, clear acetate dust jacket with title and illustration printed to front. [viii], 37 pages. Colour frontispiece and 55 hors-texte plates (7 in colour) reproducing photographs and drawings. English. 290 x 225mm. 1.2kg. . Very good, in good jacket; wear to acetate jacket which is as usual very brittle, slight wear to forecorners, a couple of short splits along front folds, vertical split along length of front panel towards spine, repaired with clear tape, yellowing to acetate; slight offsetting to front endpaper.

A rare inscribed copy of Oliver Messel. Stage Designs and Costumes, a book which illustrates the masks, costumes and set designs created by Messel in the first decade of his career. The majority of the designs featured are for Helen (1932), The Miracle (1932; starring Tilly Losch and Diana Cooper), and Cochran's 1930 & 1931 Revues, all of which were produced by C.B. Cochran. It is Cochran who provides the glowing foreword to the book. The scarcity of the book suggests that less than the stated 1,000 copies were produced.