Skazaniya i legendy (Tales and Legends). Treasures of Georgian Folk Creativity / M. Chikovani; illustrations by Lado Gudiashvili, 1963. In Russian.

Skazaniya i legendy (Tales and Legends). Treasures of Georgian Folk Creativity / M. Chikovani; illustrations by Lado Gudiashvili, 1963. In Russian.

$40.00
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Skazaniya i legendy (Tales and Legends). Treasures of Georgian Folk Creativity / M. Chikovani; illustrations by Lado Gudiashvili, 1963. In Russian.
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Skazaniya i legendy (Tales and Legends). Treasures of Georgian Folk Creativity / M. Chikovani; illustrations by Lado Gudiashvili, 1963. In Russian.

$40.00

Сказания и легенды. Серия «Сокровища грузинского народного творчества» / Академия наук Грузинской ССР, Институт истории грузинской литературы им. Шота Руставели; перевод с грузинского; под редакцией, с предисловием и примечаниями проф. М. Я. Чиковани; составители Б. В. Абуладзе, М. З. Заверин, М. Я. Чиковани.
Суперобложка, форзац, рисунок переплёта и иллюстрации - народного художника Грузии Ладо Гудиашвили; заставки и концовки - из собрания древнегрузинских орнаментов.
Тбилиси: издательство Союза писателей Грузии «Заря Востока», 1963. 220 с.: ил., 8 вклеек.
Твёрдый издательский переплёт с орнаментальным рисунком (лук и стрела) работы Гудиашвили; иллюстрированная суперобложка того же художника - многофигурная композиция всадников и мифологических персонажей на фоне кавказских гор; форзацы иллюстрированы сценой со всадниками и увенчанной короной царицей.
Тираж 100 000 экз. 
Состояние: суперобложка удовлетворительная (заломы, надрывы по сгибам, утраты по верхнему краю); переплёт хороший (потёртости уголков); блок очень хороший, чистый.
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"Tales and Legends," from the series "Treasures of Georgian Folk Creativity" / Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR, Shota Rustaveli Institute of the History of Georgian Literature; translated from the Georgian; edited, with a preface and notes, by Professor M.Ya. Chikovani; compiled by B.V. Abuladze, M.Z. Zaverin, and M.Ya. Chikovani.
Dust jacket, endpapers, binding design, and illustrations by Lado Gudiashvili, People's Artist of Georgia; headpieces and tailpieces reproduced from a collection of old Georgian ornaments.
Tbilisi: Zarya Vostoka, Georgian Writers' Union Press, 1963. 220 pp., illustrated, with 8 plates.
Publisher's hardcover binding with an ornamental bow-and-arrow motif designed by Gudiashvili; illustrated dust jacket by the same artist, a multi-figure composition of horsemen and mythological figures set against the Caucasus mountains; illustrated endpapers depicting horsemen and a crowned queen.
Print run of 100,000 copies. 
Condition: dust jacket fair (creasing, tears along the fold lines, losses at the upper edge); binding good (rubbing to the corners, small paper loss to the rear board); text block very good, clean throughout.

A richly produced collection of Georgian folk tales and legends, issued as part of the prestigious series "Treasures of Georgian Folk Creativity" under the Georgian Academy of Sciences' Rustaveli Institute of the History of Georgian Literature, edited with a scholarly preface and notes by Mikheil Chikovani, the foremost Soviet Georgian folklorist of his generation. The collection gathers Georgian oral literature spanning pre-Christian pagan mythology through medieval and modern folk creation, including foundational Tbilisi legends -- the city's founding and the tale of the Narikala fortress -- alongside the celebrated folk epic "The Legend of Arsena," concerning the outlaw-hero Arsena Odzelashvili, here translated by the noted Soviet poet-translator Vladimir Derzhavin. The book's principal distinction, however, is its complete artistic apparatus -- dust jacket, binding design, endpapers, and interior illustrations -- entrusted to Lado Gudiashvili (1896-1980), the most internationally celebrated Georgian painter of the twentieth century. Trained in Tbilisi alongside Niko Pirosmani and David Kakabadze, Gudiashvili spent the formative years 1919-1926 in Paris, exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Independants alongside Modigliani and Soutine, before returning to Soviet Georgia, where he became the dominant figure in Georgian visual art. His work here - a vividly stylized, folk-inflected vision of mounted warriors, mythological queens, and Caucasus landscapes across the dust jacket, forzatz, and binding -- represents a mature, late-career application of his distinctive graphic idiom to the very folklore that shaped his early artistic sensibility. Issued in a large print run of 100,000 copies, the book nonetheless survives less often with its illustrated dust jacket intact, given the fragility of such wrappers. Of strong interest to collectors of Gudiashvili, Georgian folklore, and Soviet-era illustrated books.

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