Title: The Book of Bread
Author: Owen Simmons
Published: 1903
Publisher: Maclaren & Sons
First edition/first impression; UK; hardback without dust wrapper, as first issued
Extremely scarce early 20th Century baking book, in its true first edition, which is now more famous as a fascinating piece of photographic history. Green cloth, lettered and decorated in black, with elaborate gilt lettering on the upper cover. Illustrated throughout with 12 chromolithograph plates, 8 tipped-in original photographs and 2 mounted silver gelatine prints. All plates, photographs and prints are present.
Referenced by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, in The Photobook: A History, Vol 1, where they write: “here, at the beginning of the twentieth century, one of the humblest, yet most essential of objects is catalogued as precisely, rigorously, and objectively as any work by a 1980s Conceptual artist".
See also
Views & Reviews The Bread Book Kenneth Josephson Conceptualism Photography
