As you like it (Come vi piace)

Roma: Collezione dell'Obeliscok Carlo Bestetti, Edizioni de;Arte, 1948. 8 splendid mounted color halftone plates and 8 monochrome drawings by Salvador Dali; 6 other monochrome illustrations and decorations; 6 monochrome advertisements by Dali, Jean Cocteau, Leonor Fini, and others for luxury goods. 36 unnumbered pages. Paper covers decorated with a typically fanciful drawing by Dali in black and faded red. 34 x 24.5 cm (covers). This is the deluxe, oversized program for a postwar production at Rome's Teatro Eliseo of Shakespeare's As You Like It, directed by Luchino Visconti and with sets and costumes by Salvador Dali aided by Franco Zefferelli. If you (truncated) did not know the history, you would not think that this luxurious publication for what must have been a remarkable production took place in the capital of one of the losing countries in the worst war in history, but here it is. The peculiar design and binding of the book virtually assures that at least one color plate will be creased at the lower inside corner, as are the inner margins of the second and seventh plates here. I wonder if Dali himself did not invent this odd arrangement. Each group of four plates is mounted on a quadruple-size gray sheet bound at the center fold and then folded out again--not in--on each side to forum a reverse double gatefold that displays all four plates at once. This puts plates 2 and 7 particularly at risk. The conventional arrangement would have produced the same result, but the first plate in each group would not have been on the opening page of the section, The cover is spotted and worn with some chipping and mending at the edges. The outer pages and the final color plate show some foxing, and the spine is chipped and splitting about 7 and 5.5 cm at head and tail. Pristine copies of this fragile book must be rare indeed. Priced accordingly. (Inventory #: 06906)