Shelter Sketch-book: Henry Moore

Artist: Henry Moore 
Author: Henry Moore 
Publisher: Editions Poetry London 
Date: 1945 
Condition: Generally tidy, this first edition is complete with the unclipped dust wrapper. The wrapper is a little worn at the edges, has a small tear to one flap and shows general handling and shelf-marking, but internally, apart from a small area of wrinkling near the spine, it is apparently complete and bright.

Moore's Shelter Drawings are still some of his most-sought after works, and this rare volume, produced at the end of WWII and thus at a time when publishing standards and paper quality was still very limited, is an almost luxury product. Presented as a facsimile of Moore's own sketchbooks, it is made up of images taken from two sketchbooks owned by Sir Kenneth Clark and the artist's wife. Priced at 15 shillings when new, this was unlikely to have been either printed or sold in large numbers, but the colour illustrations are very good and give a strong impression of how the real things looked. The small size and facsimile cover add to the real feel so, in post-war Britain, this must have been like holding a medieval breviary!