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A Visit to the Country : with surprise model pictures
(No. 4, in Dean's Surprise Model Books)
Published London : Dean & Son, 160A, Fleet Street, [ca. 1892]
By Arthur Penuel and E. Gourley.
Pop-ups are operated with strings that lift objects to create a sense of depth and roundness as well as movement. Thin barely visible stings pull the images into place. There are two single page pop-ups and one double spread pop-up in the center.
Quarter blue cloth and illustrated paper over boards - [10] p. : col. ill. ; 31 cm. - 11 13/16 x 8 7/16 (30 x 21.5 x 0.5 cm)
Created as part of Dean’s Surprise Model Series, A visit to the Country depicts upper class children visiting an aristocratic country estate.
Excellent condition: Quite rare and unusual to find in working condition. All movables are complete and work perfectly with all the original thread still intact and working! All parts original. See photos. Original binding tight and in great shape with no loose pages.
According to Iona and Peter Opie* "The Surprise Model books are the “'most ambitious and fragile of nineteenth century pop-up books”…“The effect of solidity was attempted by the use of laterally attached cotton threads which pulled in the sides of the chief feature to make it rounded”
Indeed, with the thin thread and unique mechanism of action, Dean knew how fragile their surprise picture books were. At the top of the page we are instructed: 'BEFORE OPENING EACH PAGE PLACE THUMBS WHERE MARKED, HOLD FIRMLY AND OPEN WIDE'. Small drawings of thumbs are on each side of each movable.
We found old publishers ads saying “Upon opening any page in these, books, the pictures, by an ingenious arrangement, open, as if by magic, into model relief ; and upon the book being closed, or the page turned, become perfectly flat again.”
Collectors Corner:
Dean & Son produced 4 books in this series and a later similar book:
Surprise Model Picture Book “Surprise Model” Series # 1 -1892 ( A windmill, a train, boys in a boat,etc)
A tale Of Old Sugar tub - “Surprise Model” Series # 2 – 1892 (Sugar Tub is about 2 boys going into a barrel or sugar tub and being trapped by old tar)
Seaside Fun with Surprise Model Pictures “Surprise Model” Series # 3 -1892 (the pier at Brighton, boats, lighthouse, a regatta,etc)
A visit to the Country - Dean's "surprise model" series # 4 -1892 ( trees, dog, high end farm house, kids party on the lawn, etc)
The Surprise Animal Picture Book – 1896 - (Similar to others buts ads claim “an entirely new mechanism”) 9 X 11.5 in.
Product Code: D-4
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