See My Chinese Street.

KIRBY, E.S..

$3,200.00

Item Number: 82605

Hong Kong: K. Weiss, 1954.

Signed limited first edition of E.S. Kirby’s illustrated travel book. One of 250 signed numbered copies, this is number 57. Signed by E.S. Kirby. Quarto, original embroidered silk, illustrated with 112 illustrations and 7 full multi-color pages, errata slip with first edition issue points laid in as issued. OCLC locates only 11 copies of this work. Scarce.

Elegant in its simplicity, E.S. Kirby's See My Chinese Street provides an intimate glimpse into the city streets of 1950's China. Kirby states in the book's preface: "I have described and depicted...all kinds of shop signs and items of exterior decoration, and many of the hawkers, street criers, and other persons, so as to convey all that is most interesting and pleasing in the Chinese street scene. The illustrations are from cuttings collected by me from oriental books, papers, and magazines, during the War and when I was in Free China, and before the War when I spent many years in the Far East. The publications I have clipped are nearly all Japanese. The Chinese themselves would naturally never write, study, or draw pictures of matters that were familiar and everyday to them."