Propos d’un intoxiqué
Jun 6th, 2013 by houghtonmodern
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.
Propos d’un intoxiqué, Jules Boissière’s 1896 chronicle of opium use and dissipation in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, receives a lavish reissue in 1929. A limited edition of 97 copies, the book is designed with a motif of bamboo and opium poppy pods in red and black. It also features colored lithographs of original illustrations by Tsuguharu Foujita, a Tokyo-born artist who lived in France for much of his life; the illustrations depict both drug use and quotidian life in Southeast Asia. The copy pictured here is Foujita’s own hors-commerce copy, extra-illustrated with additional suites of his illustrations in black and white and color; the binding in vellum, by the French binder Jean Duval, has a self-portrait of Foujita affixed to the front cover.
J. Boissière. Propos d’un intoxiqué. [Paris]: Javal & Bourdeaux, 1929. PQ2603.O37 P76 1929x.
Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.