[Rarebooks] FS: Scarce 1916 Private Oriental Rug Collection Catalog

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

Ballard, James F.  "ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE AND DESCRIPTIONS OF GHIORDES
RUGS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF
JAMES F. BALLARD, ST. LOUIS, MO."

St. Louis; The Oriental Publishing Company: 1916. Edition limited to 100
numbered and signed copies.

James F. Ballard was a perfectly happy and wealthy St. Louis drug
manufacturer when he bought his first oriental rug while walking down a
street in New York in 1905. From there he went on to rapidly amass one of
the greatest and most important private collections of oriental carpets in
American history.

As O'Bannon points out in an article for Oriental Rug Review (Vol.II/3),
one of the things that makes the Ballard Collection unique, aside from the
large number of great rugs it contained, was that it was put together with
the intent that it would be donated to museums for the enjoyment and
education of the public. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and
the St. Louis Museum of Art were the primary benefactors; in fact, the
first rugs were donated to the Met. in 1922 when Ballard invited Joseph
Breck to take as many as he chose. Breck took 125, which doubled the size
of the Met's collection at the time.

This is the first, and rarest, catalog of rugs from the Ballard
Collection, published by Ballard himself in an edition of just 100 copies
and quite scarce these days. O'Bannon 1166.

Hardcover. 9"x11.5", 2 pages of text plus 36 b/w plates with tissue guards
and facing descriptions; bound in old half leather and green cloth, covers
somewhat worn, spine head and base chipped, leather along the top front
spine hinge corroded; several old newspaper columns regarding the
collection pasted to the endpapers; piece of paper pasted to and then
removed from front free endpaper, just above a pasted-in photo of Ballard.
 $900.00

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