[Gravesend Press] Smith, Soule | designed and illustrated by Joseph C. Graves

[Richard Barksdale Harwell's Copy] The Mint Julep, the Very Dream of Drinks, from the Old Receipt of Soule Smith, Down in Lexington, KY

Lexington, KY: Gravesend Press, 1949. Hard Cover. Very Good+ binding. Item #8253

Small quarto, 7" x 5.25." [8], 7, [1 (blank)], [1 (colophon)] pp., illus. Limited edition, one of 273 1/2 copies printed "when the publishers discovered they had run out of paper." As issued, backed in cloth with pastepaper over boards and a printed title label on the spine. Light staining to the front board; perimeters of the boards are a trifle toned. Contents clean.

This is the first issue from Joseph C. Graves and his Gravesend Press just outside of Lexington, KY. Graves operated the press as a sideline from about 1949 through to the end of his life in 1960 issuing scarcely more than half a dozen books. While less known that some of his contemporaries he took his place amidst a vibrant mid-century printing and illustrating scene—friends with Victor Hammer, Carolyn Reading, Fritz Kredel, John DePol, John Fass, and others. H. Richard Archer in a history of the Graves and his press published in The Kentucky Review (Spring 1987) summarizes Graves's work thus: "All of the books, whether pamphlets or bound books, reflect the taste and high standards of a true amateur craftsman, and, as such, they certainly qualify as choice examples from one of this generation's most distinguished private presses." Scarce.

This copy from the library of Confederate historian and bibliographer, Richard Harwell with his name plate on the front pastedown. Laid in is a folded, three-paragraph TLS from the publisher, Joe Graves to "Mr. Hartwell" thanking him for a book, "The Confederate Search For A National Song" that presumably Harwell sent him. The final paragraph comments on the Fritz Kredel woodcut that graces the letterhead and was designed by Kredel for his friend Graves as a printer's mark. Offsetting to rear of the letter from adhesive where Harwell pasted it to one of the final blank leaves in the book (it too has toning from that adhesive). A fantastic inclusion and association for a book that is remarkably uncommon in commerce. This is a wonderful association in light of Harwell's 1975 book on the social and mixological history of the mint julep. The Gravesend Press: A Bibliographical Confession, p.5-6.

Price: $500.00