Featuring a Very Tiny Jezebel Tumbling in Flight

AN ORIGINAL LEAF FROM THE KLEINE PRINT BYBEL, C. 1750.

(LEAF BOOK). (MINIATURE BOOK). ADOMEIT, RUTH E.

(Los Angeles: Printed and bound by Pall Bohne for Dawson's Book Shop, 1991). 65 x 45 mm. (2 1/2 x 1 3/4"). 20 pp., [1] leaf. ONE OF 60 COPIES.

Quarter red leather over patterned paper boards, flat spine lettered in gilt, Dutch gilt endpapers.
With a leaf from the Kleine Print miniature bible, containing an excellent engraving of Jezebel and Jehu from 2 Kings 9. DeHamel and Silver, "Disbound and Dispersed," 196.5. See also: Welsh 938; Spielmann 280. The book in mint condition (the inserted leaf just slightly browned at edges, but fine and fresh).

This charming little leaf book pays tribute to a very rare miniature Bible published around 1750 in The Hague. Composed entirely of engravings printed on one side only, the work is a masterpiece of small-scale printing. In the words of the Spielmann Catalogue, "Many of the scenes depicted [in the original Bible] are of astounding beauty, considering the tiny scale upon which the artist had to work." The genesis of the present leaf book was the acquisition by the noted miniature book collector Ruth E. Adomeit (1910-96) of a fragment of 61 leaves from this Bible, which she obtained during a European trip in 1953. Our copy contains an engraving showing the meeting between the military commander Jehu and the wicked Queen Jezabel, which ends with Jezebel's being thrown from a window by her eunuchs. We see her mid-fall and upside down in the present image, while Jehu watches triumphantly from his chariot. Not surprisingly, given its small print run, this item is not commonly seen for sale. (ST20505-14)

Price: $475.00