Poems and Seven Drawings (In Its Rare Batik Binding)

San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1923. Decorative Boards. Near Fine. 1st edition, 1923. Small 4to, 38 pgs. plus 7 leaves (of plates) produced especially for this title. Versos blank, Title printed in black and red, Goudy Antique handset type. Original decorative batik boards. Minor bumping to spine ends but a very fine, tight copy without the usual offsetting from the plates. Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) was born on a ranch near Fresno, California. He was a prominent illustrator and landscape and mural painter of the early 20th-century American West. "Dixon sought to 'interpret the vastness, the loneliness' of the Western scene. On the theory that by showing little, much could be conveyed, he succeeded in bringing to his audience the very essence of an untamed and oftentimes inhospitable land. He did this through keen observation and unrelenting effort, for he was almost entirely without formal training". -- Doris Ostrander Dawdy (Artists of the American West Volume I: A Biographical Dictionary, p. 71). One of 250 copies privately printed for Maynard Dixon in January, 1923, by the Grabhorn Press. According to the entry in the Grabhorn Bibliography, "Some copies sold". The Bibliography mentions two different bindings for this book: coarse tan linen with decorations hand-painted in orange on front and back covers, or tan boards printed in black. This copy is an original Grabhorn binding but is a rare variant not mentioned in the Bibliography. Today this work is very rare and very sought after, especially in such superb condition (Grabhorn: 52).