164 STEICHEN, Edward – SANDBURG, Carl. Steichen the Photographer. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929 SIGNED BY EDWARD STEICHEN First and limited edition, one of 925 numbered copies signed by Steichen and Sandburg. This important monograph is the first devoted to Steichen’s work, and is included in Roth’s The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century : “Sandburg’s folksy modesty is a bit at odds with the solemnity and sumptuousness of the book itself, which includes a broad and cleverly sequenced array of Steichen’s work handsomely printed in warm sepia tones”. Quarto. Original black cloth, gilt lettered spine and front cover. Portrait frontispiece of Steichen and 48 photogravure plates. A few marks to covers. A very good copy. ¶ Roth, The Book of 101 Books , pp. 54–7. £2,250 [154526] 165 STOCK MARKET BUBBLES; PLAYING CARDS. April-Kaart of Kaart Spel van Momus Naar de Nieuwste Mode. [1720] PLAYING GAMES WITH THE FINANCIAL CRISIS The original full engraving satirizing John Law’s Mississippi Bubble and speculative mania more generally, the plate of which was dissected and mounted for use as playing cards, and inserted uncut into the Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid (“The Great Mirror of Folly”) in 1720; this plate sometime extracted from that volume with the original fold marks visible. Each card shows an allegorical illustration of some aspect of the Bubble troubles, with a rhyming caption in Dutch. “The order of the colors and the characters of the cards on the prints were placed there not at random but according to the order of the events of the bubble. Hearts tell the story of John Law and the Mississippi Company. Diamonds illustrate the stock trade of the West India Company. Clubs tell the story of Robert Knight, the corrupt treasurer of the South Sea Company, and stand for the phase of fraud and embezzlement. The Dutch windhandel illustrated by the plan of the Utrecht Company to dig a canal between Utrecht and the Zuider Zee is the topic of Spades. The two red suits symbolize the discovery of gold mines and the promises of unlimited profit. The black suits represent
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the following phase of mourning and sadness over the large losses” (Salman, p. 239). Salman argues that the game itself is a metaphor, mimicking the gambling which characterized the bubbles and stock trading more generally, while parodying John Law’s well known frequent appearances as a guest of European gaming houses and a player of the Faro card game (ibid.). Two different versions of the playing cards are known, imprinted from separate plates and with
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