Old Waldorf Bar Days - First Edition - Signed - Albert Stevens Crockett - Bauman Rare Books

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Old Waldorf Bar Days

Albert Stevens CROCKETT | Leighton BUDD

Item#: 76184 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Old Waldorf Bar Days

“IF YOU KNEW YOUR FIFTH AVENUE AND YOUR CAVIAR”: FIRST EDITION OF OLD WALDORF BAR DAYS, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY ALBERT CROCKETT

CROCKETT, Albert Stevens. Old Waldorf Bar Days, With the Cognomina and Composition of Four Hundred and Ninety-One Appealing Appetizers. New York: Aventine Press, 1931. Octavo, original silver cloth.

First edition of Crockett’s colorful history of the Waldorf Bar and accompanying drink manual, inscribed by him, “To Mr. David Horton, in appreciation of courtesies extended to a ‘lost’ member of his tribe during an all too short visit to Columbia [SC], Sincerely, Albert Stevens Crockett, New York, J— 27, 1934 [month unclear].”

As Albert Crockett notes herein, “If you knew your Fifth Avenue and your caviar… you would know that when I speak of the greatest and most famous exponent of the American School of Drinking, I can mean no other place than, the old Waldorf Bar.” Crockett’s lively anecdotal history is accompanied by his manual of cocktails, which he “arranged alphabetically, and in two classes. The cocktails have been set down in one list and the others, which might be classed as ‘beverages,’ have been termed ‘Fancy Potations and Otherwise.” With illustrations by Leighton Budd. Bookplate of South Carolina bibliophile Clint T. Graydon.

Interior generally fresh and clean, light soiling, edge-wear to original cloth. A handsome near-fine copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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