Dressed to Kill, Dressed to Till
Lot 39:
[ART DECO WOMEN’S COSTUME]. P. Clement Brown. ART IN DRESS. NY: P. C. Brown, 1922. Clothbound (black watered boats with blue spine), large quarto (12 5.8 x 9 ½ in.), 185 pp., (1) index. R and important work by a noted dressmaker and ladies’ tailor with studios in Manhattan, Paris, and San Francisco, this is the only extant copy known that still retains the original, folding tailor’s square of heavy blue pressboard that was issued with the book, bearing the printed inscription “BROWN’S SALON STUDIOS, 620 FIFTH AVENUE, at 50th St., NEW YORK, N.Y.” and loosely inserted inside the front cover. This book, part essay on style and beauty and part dressmaker’s manual, is perhaps the most beautiful manual of the clothing trade ever printed, with stunning BW art deco fashion plates accompanied by pattern drafts of the flapper dresses, skirts, jackets, coats and even kimonos popularized during the Roaring 20s. Not in SELIGMAN. Inscribed in ink inside the front board is the signature of this copy’s original owner, Altha-Lane Joyce (1899-1986). Preliminary research reveals that Ms. Joyce was born in North Carolina, moving to Arizona with her family at an early age. By 1917, she moved to San Diego, where she is listed in the city directory as a “student” and by 1922 was working in a secretarial capacity, later listing herself as a manager when registering to vote as a Democrat in 1924. By 1935, she had relocated to Washington, DC, career unknown. However, it may have been in the textile or fashion industry, for on 23 August 1946, she applied for a patent for “Changeable Decorative Fabric”, published in December 1948 as US Patent 2457309. In her words, “the invention comprises a fabric having portions of different colors, or black and white, which may be manipulated to provide a plurality of effects. These effects may be all of one color or shade, all of another color or shade, 1 or any desired combination of colors or shades.” This independent woman and her work merits further investigation. Condition: edgewear to spine and boards, boards still attached, but hinges loose; pages clean and bright with some light toning near the edges; otherwise very good.
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