Sport in Somaliland,

£7,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books · No longer available

One of the rarest of big-game books and certainly one of the most luxuriously produced. Potocki (1862-1922), was a renowned big-game hunter and breeder of Arabian horses. He created his own game park at Pilawin which was written about by Richard Lydekker. This provided a wild habitat for the breeding of elk and his success encouraged him to import American and Siberian wapiti, the red deer of the Caucasus, and other animals. He was given a breeding pair of European bison from the royal preserve of Bielowicz, and added a herd of American bison as well. The Pilawin preserve, near the Potocki palace (in present day Ukraine), comprised more than 7,000 acres of forests and meadows enclosed by an eight-foot high wooden paling and was part of a larger forest of some 50,000 acres. The volume commemorates his 1895 safari to the Haud region of Somaliland and then into the Ogaden where the party bagged the 'big five' and numerous antelopes, gazelles, etc. 'Excellent artwork' (Czech). First English edition, limited to 200 numbered copies signed by Rowland Ward, Imperial 4to. (40 x 32 cm. approx.), vii, 140 pp., coloured portrait frontispiece, 18 photogravure plates (5 double-page), 58 coloured, and 7 monochrome illustrations in text after Piotr Stachiewicz, coloured folding map, fine modern full red morocco gilt with pictorial gilt block to upper cover to the same design as the original, original Rowland Ward "snakeskin" end-papers, top edge gilt others uncut, a fine example. Czech, Afri

• Binding: Hardcover

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