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[BILIBIN] Skazka o tsare Saltane, o syne ego, slavnom i moguchchem bogatyre kniaze Gvidone Saltanoviche i o prekrasnoi tsarevne Lebedi [i.e. The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son, the Glorious and Mighty Hero Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Swan Princess]

PUSHKIN, A.

Item #2932

Illustrated by Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin. [St. Petersburg]: Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers, [1907]. 20 pp. With chromolithographed illustrations throughout. Oblong quarto. 26 ×33 cm (10¼×13 in). Original publisher’s illustrated wrappers. Spine slightly rubbed, old price on the back wrapper which is slightly rubbed as well; otherwise a very good copy.

First edition of one of the most accomplished books produced through the collaboration between Ivan Bilibin and the Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers.

The Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers was founded in 1818 as the principal state establishment responsible for printing banknotes, credit notes, official documents, and other materials requiring advanced protection against forgery. Generously financed by the imperial government and equipped with some of the finest printing technology available in Russia, it was not governed by the usual commercial concerns of production cost and profitability. Under the direction of the physicist and academician Prince Boris Borisovich Golitsyn (1862–1916) and with the technical expertise of the engineer and inventor Georgy Nikolaevich Scamoni (1835–1907), the Expedition also began producing ambitious illustrated books in which its advanced printing methods could be applied to artistic rather than official work.

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (1876–1942) originally executed his fairy-tale illustrations in watercolor. The Expedition reproduced them by chromolithography, a demanding process that required the careful separation and printing of multiple colors but preserved much of the clarity, brightness, and decorative precision of the original designs. The technical quality of the printing was essential to Bilibin’s style, in which sharply defined outlines, flat areas of color, and densely patterned borders form a unified page.

Between 1899 and 1903 Bilibin illustrated six individual booklets of Russian folk tales for the Expedition: The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf, The Frog Princess, The Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka, and The White Duck. These were followed by Marya Morevna. The present edition of Pushkin’s Tale of Tsar Saltan belongs to the later and more elaborate phase of this collaboration, in which the artist applied the visual language developed for the folk-tale series to one of Pushkin’s best-known literary fairy tales.

Price: $1,500.00