327 - VERA, André.

VERA, André. Le Nouveau jardin. Paris, Emile-Paul, (1912). Very small folio, 267 pp., illustrated with wood engravings. Paperback, cover adorned with a large woodcut (a few pinholes and stains on the cover, a few foxing spots on the first and last leaves, edges slightly oxidized, but a good copy). Bibliography: Ganay, 370. Description: Rare first edition of this manifesto on Art Deco gardens. First printing. One of 90 copies printed on Arches vellum, partially cut to size with wide margins. Features numerous vignettes and ornaments, drawn and engraved in black on wood by Paul Vera. 35 full-page plates of plans, perspective views, and explanatory drawings. André Vera (1881–1971), a landscape architect, urban planner, and pioneer of Art Deco in France, is known for his books on gardens, illustrated by his brother, the painter and decorator Paul Vera (1882–1957), who was not only a painter and garden decorator but also an engraver, illustrator, and ceramicist. *Le Nouveau Jardin*, drawing on models treated in a “modern” spirit—that of decorative “Cubism”—shows how the layout and color scheme of gardens in this new style, which breaks free from Le Nôtre, would be understood. “The formal garden embodies the decorative ideal of our generation,” wrote Albert Maumené, a horticultural specialist and writer of the time… Dedication by the author to Gustave Valmont on the half-title page. Archivist, paleographer, and poet (1881–Sept. 1914). His name was inscribed in the Panthéon on the list of writers who died for France.