RIVIÈRE & SON. POGANY, Willy. KHAYYAM, Omar. ~ Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
16 tipped in colour plates within decorative borders and numerous illustrations in text printed in blue by Willy Pogany. Text printed in blue and black. 8vo., in a signed binding by Rivière & Son of full red morocco with a central oval panel on the front cover of green calf with Eve, the serpent and the tree of life inlaid in various colour calf and morocco, tooled in blind. The lower panel has and oval panel with the serpent twined round a chalice all tooled in gilt. Both sides are elaborately decorated in gilt with full borders of grapes and vine leaves surrounded by lettered bordersjwith verses from the Rubaiyat, with borders of gilt fillets and dots. The spine with raised bands and 6 compartments all tooled or lettered in gilt, turn-ins with vine leaf and gilt fillet borders, patterned paper endpapers, all edges gilt. An extremely handsome binding in superb condition housed in a red cloth slipcase.
Pogany, born in Hungary in 1882 and moving to the US in 1915,had illustrated the Rubaiyat previously in 1909 but these illustrations show a very different more westernised and modern influence than the earlier edition.
Robert Rivière came from a Huguenot family of artists and was apprenticed to a London firm before setting up business in 1829 in Bath as a bookseller and binder. In 1840 he returned to London and soon became one of London’s fore-most bookbinders. After his death in 1882 the firm continued producing its elaborately finished bindings under his second daughter’s family until the business was wound up in 1939.