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A Visit to the Country : with surprise model pictures - also containing movables for Seaside Fun
(No. 4, in Dean's Surprise Model Books)
Published London : Dean & Son, 160A, Fleet Street, [ca. 1892]
By Arthur Penuel and E. Gourley.
The cover is for A Visit To The Country. After reading A Visit To The Country, we are treated to another story "Seaside Fun"
It appears to us that a long ago conservator added Seaside Fun to this copy of A Visit To The Country - see photos
Both "books" within a book are complete with the delicate strings intact. Quite a treasure for Dean collectors.
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. Followed by Seaside Fun also containing 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)
Good condition: See photos. Quite rare and unusual to find in mostly working condition. All movables are complete and the original threads are still intact and working! The last movable appears to need some help standing out form the page completely. All parts original. See photos.
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-44
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