Gambling Memorabilia

La Shelle, Kirke. Poker Rubaiyat. Phoenix: Bandar Log Press, 1902. Hand-numbered 243 of 274 copies. Publisher’s illustrated wrappers. With colored woodblock plates by John Francis (Frank) Holme, and playing card motif rubrication, on hand-made paper. 4to. Short tears to wrapper at edges and top of spine, else very good. Scarce. Sold with the publisher’s prospectus and an enclosure naming its officers, directors, and stockholders; original mailing envelope from Bandar Log (tattered); a 1938 letterpress version of the poem (n.p.; “privately printed”); and two letterpress printed chapbooks related to Bandar Log and Frank Holme, Just for Fun and “F.H.” both privately printed at Yselta by Edwin B. Hill. Poker Rubaiyat was the first and perhaps the most ambitious of the nine works published by Bandar Log. Lacking more sophisticated equipment, and operating out of a “printing shack” in Arizona (still a decade away from achieving statehood), the illustrations were cut with a jackknife by the press’s founder, Holme (1868 – 1904), who also designed the book and, according to the prospectus, “scratched out” key-blocks for the initials. According to the University of Arizona Library, which houses a special collection of his works, Holme, a newspaper artist, also founded the School of Illustration, Chicago.