Folio. Full green crushed morocco over boards. Accompanying portfolio with 40 varyingly illustrated leaves cloth-backed with ties. Manuscript pages and illuminated chapter headings reproduced by collotype and stencil by Ben Shahn. Housed in a marbled box with green morocco backstrip and gilt. Fine.

3 of 14 numbered copies hors commerce.  First edition of Ecclesiastes handwritten and illuminated by Ben Shahn, bearing the artist’s signature on an original lithograph. Binding by Engel, Malakoff. . The box, portfolio and slipcase by Andine, Paris. Collotype and hand-stencilling for the manuscript page and illuminated chapter headings reproduction. Gold lettering reproduced in serigraphy by Thierry, Paris. Accompanying the main volume is a portfolio containing two lithographs, signed and numbered by the artist. Set of eight plates on Arches Verge. Thirty plates showing progressive states, stencils, lithograph plates and coloured impressions. These three sections are housed in a cloth-backed board portfolio with ties. An exquisite set.

A magnificent pictorial narration of the Book of Ecclesiastes, reflecting on worldly inequities and the constraints of wisdom and righteousness.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time of peace.’