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Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

1929

  • Work on this object began.

2021

2025

  • You found it!

Book, Frontispiece of Vathek

This is a Book. It was illustrated by Marion Dorn Kauffer and published by Nonesuch Press. It is dated 1929. Its medium is lithograph. It is a part of the department.

The 18th-century fable Vathek follows an immoral leader of the Islamic empire on an imaginary pursuit of knowledge and power. Nonesuch Press commissioned Dorn for the illustrations of a new edition that indulged popular British fantasies of Arab culture. Dorn’s whimsical frontispiece pictures a palace courtyard with a floor suggestive of her geometric rugs.

It is credited Exhibition purchase.

Its dimensions are

H x W x D (open and in mount): 15.2 × 26.7 × 24.1 cm (6 in. × 10 1/2 in. × 9 1/2 in.)

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer.

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/2318805238/ |title=Book, Frontispiece of Vathek |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=11 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>