Nah und Fern [Near and Far]

Munich: Verlag von Braun & Schneider, 1887. Scarce Meggendorfer
In Excellent Condition

[MOVABLE BOOK]. MEGGENDORFER, Lothar. Nah Und Fern. Ein Tierbilderbuch zum Ziehen von L. Meggendorfer. [Near and Far. An Animal Picture Book for Drawing]. München: Verlag von Braun & Schneider, n.d. [1887].

First edition, followed by an English edition in 1890 and second German edition in 1900. Tall Quarto (12 x 9 1/8 in; 303 x 230 mm). Foreword and eight bright and vivid color panels with fully functional moveable parts, with accompanying text.

Publisher's original color pictorial boards, lightly rubbed. Inner hinges (truncated) professionally strengthened. An excellent copy.

An extremely scarce Meggendorfer, with only three copies of this first edition in institutional holdings worldwide, at Univ. of Chicago, Univ. of Virginia, and Univ. of Washington.

The Panels:

Der Löwe. (The Lion)
Die Schwäne (The Swans)
Die Giraffe (The Giraffe)
Das Kalb (The Calf)
Der Papagei (The Parrot)
Das Kamel (The Camel)
Die beiden Schweinchen (The Two Little Pigs)
Der Elefant (The Elephant)

Meggendorfer created all of the pictorial elements of his books himself in pen and watercolor drawings. He then assembled the book in dummy form and had outline lithographs executed, which he hand-colored to serve as guides for the color printing.

“Meggendorfer’s reputation today is based almost solely on his ingenious mechanical picture-books for children. These he began to design during the late 1880s, and many of these books went into multiple German editions besides translations into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Bohemian, Hungarian, and Russian. Deservedly, he is considered the creator and chief innovator of moveable toy books, and his printed works are eagerly sought after by collectors of historical children’s literature. He produced books with moveable figures, transformation pictures segmented into three parts and thus interchangeable, books with pop-up designs, rotating wheels as well as four-panel slat pictures which change the illustrations through movement, and simply funny picture books for children that would certainly make them laugh and generally contributed to some educational benefit” (Justin G. Schiller’s Introduction to The Publishing Archive of Lothar Meggendorfer. Original drawings, hand-colored lithographs and production files for his children’s book illustrations. Offered for sale by Justin G. Schiller, Ltd. (New York, 1975)).

“There is little doubt that the most elaborate and ingenious movables ever produced were those of the German Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) made during the 1880s and 1890s…the mechanisms and operations of Meggendorfer’s books—not to mention the originality of his figures—are far superior to any others published before or since. The devices that operated the various figures in Meggendorfer’s books consisted of a series of inter-connecting cardboard levers sandwiched between the coloured illustration on the front of the oblong leaf and the dummy pasted behind it. The animated limbs and heads were cut-out models on the front of the picture, and moving the tab set the whole scene in motion” (Haining, Movable Books, pp. 65-73). (Inventory #: 06071)