Haggadah for Passover, Copied and Illustrated by Ben Shahn, with a Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Cecil Roth, Paris & London: The Trianon Press, 1966

Limited special edition for collectors and museums, number D of 10 copies numbered A to J, signed by the artist on the frontispiece and introduction page.

Inspired by the tradition of medieval illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, Lithuanian-born American graphic artist Ben Shahn (1898-1969) originally created eleven of the twelve full-page color plates for this Haggadah over the course of six months circa 1930. The illustrations, like those executed for his secular works, highlight the struggle against oppression, a theme central to the Passover story. The figures depicted were modeled after the Jews of Djerba, whom Shahn had encountered during a year-long journey through North Africa.

After an unsuccessful attempt to print the Haggadah in color, Shahn sold the completed plates to Frieda Warburg, from whose son Edward they passed in 1947 into the permanent collection of The Jewish Museum (New York). In 1958, however, Shahn serendipitously met Arnold Fawcus, a publisher of art books and facsimiles, in a small country inn in Burgundy, and the two later agreed to partner in seeing the Haggadah project through. Shahn completed the twelfth illustration, added drawings of the scenes of the Had gadya (An Only Kid) song, and designed a beautiful frontispiece and title page, while Fawcus commissioned British scholar Cecil Roth to compose an introduction and notes (and to reuse his 1934 translation of the Haggadah text). Touted at the time as “perhaps the most beautiful book ever designed and illustrated by an American artist” and considered to be among Shahn’s “finest and most original work[s],” this deluxe edition of the Haggadah is a monument to the skill of one of the twentieth century’s most famous Jewish cultural figures.

Physical Description

136, xxiv pages (15 3/8 x 11 7/8 in.; 392 x 300 mm) printed on Auvergne handmade pure rag paper; Hebrew and English, Hebrew section titles and select other texts printed in Shahn’s distinctive Hebrew typeface; unsewn sheets, as issued, folded into original stiff wrappers in the grand luxe style, with the deckle-edges of the paper left untrimmed. Lithographed multicolor frontispiece and decorated title; twelve full-page collotype and pochoir plates after Shahn’s original watercolors; ten collotype deep brick red plates after drawings of the scenes of Had gadya (An Only Kid); floral decorations on pp. 8, 90. Slight scattered staining; minor dampstaining along lower edges. Title gilt in Hebrew and English on respective covers; original glassine overwrap, wrapped in tissue paper. Additional materials, each housed in a numbered and custom-labeled folder: 1) Original illustration from An Only Kid (the butcher); 2) Colour plates on Japanese Nacré handmade paper; 3) Colour plates on Arches Grand Vélin; 4) Uncoloured plates on Arches Vergé paper; 5) A series of thirty-four progressives showing the stages in the hand-stencil coloring of a single plate (“In Every Generation Men rise up against Us”); 6) Three original guide-sheets and stencils (“In Every Generation Men rise up against Us”); 7) Two proof states of the lithograph frontispiece. All folders tied within a custom burlap enclosure. Accompanied by a promotional pamphlet, slightly scuffed and worn, and sample collotype and pochoir plate (“The Reckoning of the Miracles”). The whole ensemble housed in a parchment-covered handmade folding case, slightly scuffed; title gilt on upper and lower boards and on spine (together with press and artist name); two intact silver-gilt clasps on fore-edge.

Literature

Howard Greenfeld, Ben Shahn: An Artist’s Life (New York: Random House, 1998), 65-66, 292-303.