LIDDEL (Mary). Little Machinery. By Mary Liddell. Doubleday, Page & Co. Garden City, New York. 1926. Small in-4 (23,8 x 20,8 cm). 62 pp. : black cloth spine, plates identically lithographed in black and white, orange background, man-machine surrounded by animals and cogs, orange endpapers illustrated with white cogs. Extremely rare first edition of a unique album, with avant-garde graphics related to the period of technological advance in the 1920s in the United States and which strongly alludes to Russian constructivism at the same time. Artist Mary Gray Patterson Liddel (1894-1978) wrote and drew the book for her children. It will be her only book published as an author and illustrator. From the start, the 62 pages of the book are unusual in the editorial production of American albums of the time. Covers, title page and 31 plates of an extraordinary inventiveness, fusion of the human and the tool: drawings in movement, in lines and geometrical forms. Orange, yellow, blue duck, black, selection of bright colors for the story of "The Little Machine" born from the wreckage of a steam locomotive, an old trolley and a crashed car. Opposite the plates, text calligraphed by the artist in different bodies also illustrated with many tools and animals. Orange initials and small notes that are not meant to be didactic but just funny. In perfect condition with a minor restoration on the upper corner of the second plate and on a small crack at the foot of page 3.