And as we were talking about the Japanese mezzotint artist, Katsunori Hamanishi, here are two smallish bookplates by him up for sale on Dutch ebay. I'm afraid I was unable to enlarge the images onsite so this was the best I could do. He a master, fastidious and compelling, and this is an opportunity at a starting bid of €19.50 - not too bad because I think I paid about £17 for one. All his ex libris are signed. No bids as yet but the auction finishes about 8.30 pm tomorrow.There are two others. If you aren't familiar with his work, there are lots of images online.
There have been a few of his bookplate pieces passing through ebay recently. Quite a nice way to get one of his prints for very small money (and 20-odd quid is potentially very small money in the big scheme of things, given his strong reputation).
ReplyDeleteFor some reason the bookplate print dealers on ebay always seem to be from either the Netherlands or Belgium. Not sure why that is. Tend to get a lot of very skillful etchings by Eastern European artists.
All true.
ReplyDeleteSome of the best buys can be artists like Vladimir Suchanek or Roman Sustov. They ignore the typographical tradition and create a fairsized image with only minimum lettering. This can mean you have a signed print for very little.
Here's something to mull over. There are currently ten Louis Lozowick lithographs on ebay at significantly below retail value. Some of them are very good buys if they're what they purport to be. The question is, are they. Looking at the signatures and the paper, I'd say they probably are, but my Toogoodtobetruedar is shrieking that they should have sold by now if they were right. Frustratingly, the Lozowick catalogue raisonne doesn't really give any information that could be used conclusively to tell one way or another.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, just a heads up either for discussion or in case readers with better knowledge/more guts than myself want to take a punt.