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A large advertisement for a supplier of educational materials for schools, including maps, globes, gym equipment, easels, desks, benches and geometry instruments.

A superb complete set of Lévy’s cyanotypes depicting English domestic interiors of the 1880s and 90s printed directly from Henry Bedford Lemere’s negatives. The photographs primarily document the interiors of houses in England, Scotland, and Wales (as well as a small number of public buildings) and include excellent depictions of paintings and furniture. They include entrance halls, reception rooms, stairwells and fireplaces, with key details such as paintings, furniture, panelling and tiling clearly recorded, all allowing identification.

These are rare, though two sets survive in American libraries: at Yale Center for British Art and at the Getty ― the latter incomplete but with a partial list of subjects, allowing identification of some 50 of the 87 prints ― Parham Park (Sussex), Astley Hall and Standish Hall (Lancashire), Swan House (Chelsea, London), Monkhams (Woodford, Essex), Curling Hall (Ayrshire) and The Cottage (Walton Heath, Surrey). Of special interest are the three plates (numbers 1-3) of Dawpool, (Thurstaston, Cheshire) home of Thomas Henry Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, which clearly show Rossetti’s painting The Loving Cup purchased by Ismay in 1892. Another is of 49 Prince’s Gate, London, home of Frederick Richard Leyland showing another Rossetti, La Pia together with Burne-Jones’s Wine of Circe. 49 Prince’s Gate was one of the most celebrated aesthetic interiors of the period with a magnificent staircase (transferred from Northumberland House) and many other works of art including French furniture, Flemish tapestries, oriental Porcelain and Italian bronzes. Leyland’s collection was sold in 1892, making this image an especially valuable record.

‘[Bedford Lemere & Co.] was very astute in selling large numbers of its images to architects and craftsmen who wanted to appraise themselves of what their colleagues were doing or build up a body of visual examples for use in their own work’ [Culture 24, 7 May 2010]. They also clearly licensed some of their images to publisher’s abroad, in this case to Albert Lévy whose celebrated cyanotypes were widely distributed in France and the United States but are now rare in complete sets.

An excellent example of a French neo-gothic prayerbook, imitating many of the forms of medieval manuscripts, designed to be illuminated by hand by (or for) the owner. The photogravure text and borders were printed in monochrome and could then be coloured to the owner’s taste. In this example, a manuscript note on the title verso, ‘Enl. Charles DeFrance. 1883’ gives the identity of the illuminator, whose work is both accurate and sumptuous.
Mademoiselle A. Rabeau was an interesting figure in the revival of illumination in late nineteenth-century, providing instruction in this popular art (see Hindman, Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age, p. 152). In fact, there were two A. Rabeau sisters: Amélie and Adrienne — both contributed illuminations to the exhibition ‘Miniaturistes et Enlumineurs de France’ in 1894 (La Plume, 1894, 303). The 1882 Livre d’Heures was a popular publication (examples survive with different levels of illumination) and was often given as a First Communion gift, usually but not exclusively, to girls. It contains a final leaf on which the recipient could record the date of their later marriage but in this case it has been left blank.

A rare and spectacular set of 100 original cyanotypes of the buildings and pavilions of the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. The large format prints include the Porte monumentale and a series of views of the monumental Grand and Petit Palais together with the national pavilions and those devoted to the arts, industry and commerce. Besides the two Palais, the majority of the buildings were temporary — built on iron frames covered with plaster and artificial stone — and most were demolished immediately after Exposition closed. Levy’s large format prints for the Merveilles are a beautiful and valuable record of their architectural variety.
Albert Lévy (1847-1931) was both a pioneering and prolific architectural photographer, unusual for his time in working on both sides of the Atlantic, with studios in Paris and New York. Characteristically, his collections were issued as cyanotypes printed directly from the original glass negatives. His collections included numerous sequences of French, British and American buildings of the Gilded Age, but many, including the Merveilles et les originalités architecturales a l’Exposition are now very rare indeed.

First edition. A juvenile Cook in French, describing his voyages to the Pacific, including New Zealand, Batavia (Jakarta), Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands. the plates being: Mort de Capitaine Cook (frontispiece); Indien courant un Muck; Habitans de l’Ile Mallicalo and Débarquement du Capitaine Cook dans la baie de Karakakooka. The appendix contains an interesting ethnographic essay ‘Des deux variétés de l’espèce humaine recnnues dans l’Océanie’, two others on the geography of Oceania and on previous voyages to the region followed by biographies of participants in Cook’s voyages (Cook, Banks, Solander, the Forsters, Clark and Bligh). Worldcat and Library Hub locate no UK or North American copies (though there is one at the University of Hawaii)

A privately-published fairy tale by a young girl, of which we can find no copy in any public collection, nor any obvious trace of the work or its author elsewhere. The book is printed on a handsome glazed paper and incorporates three illustrations, presumably the work of the author. It was almost certainly her who also decorated the smooth calf binding with a whimsical design depicting an owl in a tree by moonlight. The printed dedication is to ‘ma chère petite Cousine Renée’, with this copy of what was presumably a very small edition inscribed to the author’s mother.

A delightful miniature library in its original publisher’s box, comprising: 1. Berquine, Variétés; 2. Démoustier, Mythologie; 3. Florian, Mélanges; 4. La Fontaine, Fables; 5. Millevoye; 6. Poésies, Voltaire. The set was issued in various forms, sometime with wrappers of green and pink and sometimes in a variant box. Bondy, p. 75; Gumuchian, 4062; Welsh, Miniature books, 1250

Sole edition of this comic guide to London and the English, issued to coincide with the Great Exhibition. The four letterpress pages give some limited information for visitors: English money, the major sites (headed of course with the Crystal Palace), several hotels, inns and restaurants, carriage and boat fare, a few useful phrases and some baffling tips on British manners ― but this is really a vehicle for the 14 comic plates. They depict 46 numbered scenes or characters including: a coachman and a sweep, The Times newspaper, two pugilists, judges, beggars, hawkers, a Scotsman, huge barrels of drink (labelled ‘Monster Cask’) and a ratcatcher. The cover attributes the lithographs to ‘Mr Cric’ and the text to ‘Mr Crac’ and gives Paris and London booksellers’ addresses, with a price of ‘1 Shelling’. Worldcat lists the Vanderbilt University copy only; no British copies located in Library Hub; the CCFr lists a single copy in France (Bar le Duc).

An interesting collection of 54 rare hand coloured plates by Augsburg publishers Johann Michael Motz and Albrecht Schmidt, very much in the style of the recreational and educational prints of the slightly earlier Augsburg engraver-publisher Martin Engelbrecht. Like Engelbrecht’s these prints were intended for popular consumption and were often cut up for albums or other decoupage projects. All are very rare, notably the fine 4-plate suite of the continents here and a part of the biblical sequence by Schmidt. The album was evidently put together c. 1800 from two or more constituent parts, perhaps already quite well used to judge by the variation in condition across the collection and by the various patterns of previous stab holes. An early owner/user has added some amusing pencil drawings to the rear endpapers.

Comprising:

1. Les Amans Surpris (after Boucher, c, 1750), Motz.
2. Les Plaisirs au jardin & La musique, 2 plates, Motz.
3. Europa, Asia, Africa, America, 4 plates, lower lines of verses and imprint cropped, but Motz after I. Waxmuth.
4. Der Frühling, Der Sommer, Der Herbst, Der Winter, 4 plates, Motz.
5. Das Feuer, Das Wasser, Die Lufft, Die Erde, 4 plates, Motz.
6. Der Morgen, Der Mittag, Der Abend, Die Nacht, 4 plates, Motz after Stockhman[n].
7. [Hunting], 2 untitled prints, Motz after Stockhman[n].
8. [Old Testament. Genesis] 14 plates, numbered 5-12, 37, 40, 45-48 each with gold borders, Albrecht Schmidt. [of 56?]
9. [Old Testament, Genesis, the story of Joseph]. 13 plates, numbered 1-5, 7-14. Motz.
10. [The Prodigal Son]. 6 plates, numbered 1-2, 5-8, Motz after C. Vogt (stubs of plates 3 & 4, evidently cut out).

First edition of this important legal memoir, the official record of the trial of Anne Grandjean (later Jean-Baptiste). Anne Grandjean was born at Grenoble in 1732, and baptised and raised as a girl until she discovered her attraction to other girls at the age of 14. Confessing this to her father, he was convinced of her feelings, and had her re-baptised as Jean-Baptiste, insisting she live as a young man. At the age of 32, while living as a married man at Lyon, a childhood friend informed Jean-Baptiste’s wife that she had married a ‘hermaphrodite’. Subjected to judicial enquiry, Grandjean was declared to be female and banished in perpetuity with the requirement that he live as a woman and have no further congress with the female sex for the rest of his life.
The official memoir of the case is thus a remarkable source of detail concerning contemporary orthodox notions of sex and gender. The case and the verdict reward a very close reading and yield several immediate observations. Firstly, the term ‘hermaphrodite’ is used to denote same-sex attraction rather than in a physiological sense, secondly, the decision to change gender was made under the advice of a Catholic confessor who counselled that to remain a woman attracted to women would inexorably lead to a crime in the eyes of the church and, thirdly, a major objection to the transition was that Jean-Baptiste had unlawfully adopted the legal status of a male citoyen. Gay III, 107.

First edition of this important report on the history of opium use and trade in China, printed in China but considered the the first English-language book on opium. Its author was a British missionary long established in the Far East as a translator for the Inspectorate General of Customs at Shanghai. It provides not only botanical and medicinal accounts drawn from earlier Chinese sources, but traces the introduction of opium by Arab and then European traders which had led to the nineteenth-century opium wars.

A charming little album created for the birthday celebrations of the young Russian Empress, Alexandra Feodorovna (1798-1860), wife of Czar Nicholas I (born Princess Charlotte of Prussia, daughter of Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm III). The ‘Magic of the White Rose’ celebration was organised by Charlotte’s brothers and recreated a medieval tournament on the theme of the mediaeval legend of ‘Blanchefleur’, the pet name given to Alexandra in childhood, after de la Motte-Fouqué’s Rose Blanchefleur. It is recorded in several prints and lavish illustrated books as well as other souvenirs (such as sets of commemorative china repeating the emblems found in this diminutive album). The album was probably one of six commissioned by the Empress and presented to her sisters and sisters-in-law on July 13th and contains the emblems of each of the knights in the form of quasi-heraldic escutcheons.
There are 48 highly-coloured armorial emblems, including mottoes in Latin, French, German and Italian. with mottoes such as: ‘Dem Freunde die Brust, dem Feinde die Stirn’; ‘Agilité vaut plus que force’; ‘Nunquam retrorsum’; ‘Schönheit besiegt die Stärke’ (‘Beauty conquers strength’); ‘Tout pour elle rien sans elle mais qui est elle’ and ‘Uni militat astro’. The paintings are made in a very pretty red morocco notebook with gilt stamped binding (with a rose device), original pencil and two preliminary leaves with erasable surfaces. Ilatovskaya and Pakhomova-Geres, Volshebstvo Beloi Rozy (St. Petersburg, 2003).

Rare first edition of the memoirs of the great circus performer Jules Léotard, pioneer of the flying trapeze who inspired the 1867 song ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’. A second edition of his Mémoires appeared in the same year, with the same pagination, but giving ‘deuxième édition’ on the title — almost all library copies appear to be of this later edition. The superb comic lithograph by Durandeau shows Léotard trapezing over the city of Paris, while adoring female fans cry out to him from the rooftops (some flying heart-shaped kites). With Blondin, Léotard was one of the first great celebrities of the circus, when he visited London in 1861, Charles Dickens wrote: ‘I have been beguiled into seeing Léotard, and it is at once the most fearful and most graceful thing I have ever seen.’ (Letter to Macready, June 11, 1861).

A book auction bill, advertising the second part of the auction sale of what was evidently an immense private library belonging to the unidentified (by us) M. V***, de Chartres. Buyers premium is advertised at 5% and the catalogue was issued by auctioneer Charpentier and book expert Auguste Aubry. No copy of the catalogue (of either part) is recorded in the Bibliothèque nationale catalogue.

Two blood-sucking landlords expelling a bewildered tenant. In the hand of one of the ‘vampires’ a note reads ‘eviction’ [congé], ‘end of lease’ [fin de bail] and ‘increase’ [augmentation] and all the notes scattered on the ground make reference to the real estate business. The caption reads ‘We promise, no reduction’. Paris (like London) was in the throes of a vampire craze in the 1820s, following the publication of Polidori’s The Vampyre in 1819, Charles Nodier’s melodrama Le Vampire was performed in Paris in June 1820, and spawned a host of spinoffs in popular culture and the press.

A rare and amusing satire on the practice of acupunture ― much in vogue among certain Parisian doctors in the early nineteenth century. A sickly male patient is receiving a doctor’s needles, the longest of which is seemingly destined for his heart; a young woman in a bonnet seems unimpressed with her needles (one pierces her tongue); while a young man throws down a set of crutches. On the wall behind hangs a painting of the martrydom of Saint Sebastian. Though known in France since the seventeenth century, acupuncture was revived in the decades after 1800 — Doctor Louis-Joseph Berlioz (1776–1858, the composer’s father) claimed to have used it successfully in 1810 and published a paper on the subject, while Jules Cloquet published his influential Traité de l’acupuncture in 1826.
The print was listed in the Bibliographie de France for 1825 (p. 172). It was published by Mantoux and Cheyère (cf. the Paris Musée Carnavalet copy) though in our example Mantoux’s name has been cancelled in the imprint line.

A wonderful collection of contemporary fashion designs for the year 1867-8. The title-page, (marked ‘5ème volume) is an emblem of the ever-changing nature of fashion ― two richly-dressed women stand between marker posts for the years 1867 and 1868, one in deep winter attire with bonnet, scarf, cape and muff, the other in the light spring garments of the following year. Between them an elegant dandy stands with a velocipede (suggesting modernity, movement and rapidity) and above is a cartouche enclosing a naked woman below the legend: ‘Comment l’habiller-t-on?’ (‘how will they dress?’). The final leaf is similarly emblematic, with a splendidly-attired young woman in green stepping from 1868 to 1869 over a running stream.
Anonymous and evidently once part of a sequence, these brilliant watercolours depict Parisian fashions at their most colourful and sumptuous. Those showing off fabrics with new chemical or aniline dyes of green, mauve and blue are often heightened with gum arabic, adding a lustrous sheen, evocative of rich and heavy silks then much in vogue. Skirts are full and often multi-layered, with arrangements for lifting the outermost layer for walking. Special attention is paid to the backs of these outfits, with a good number seen from the side or behind, showing the elaborate ruffles and bows (which would develop into fully-blown bustles in the following decade). There are stripes, plaids, pleats, ruffles, embroidery, lace and beadwork. Hairstyles are also carefully depicted, with long and thick tresses in a variety of braids and tresses, as well as luxuriantly loose styles.
The anonymous artist was a highly accomplished fashion artist, brilliantly equipped to render details and textures of fabrics, dress and deportment, of the type employed by designers and couturiers to show off to prospective customers their latest creations. This is a remarkable record of a golden age of Parisian dressmaking at the height of nineteenth-century haute couture when designers such as Charles Worth were claiming the city as the focus of the fashionable world.

First and only edition of a rare set of commercial tables for calculating interest, complete with its original card ‘indicateur’ to be laid over the tables, giving solutions. Based on a rate of 5 percent, the tables provide interest calculations for periods from one day to five years. Jacquand is styled ‘Commis-Greffier du tribunat de 1re instance de Tournon (Ardèche) et ancien professeur de Mathématiques’. The town of Tournon, on the banks of the Rhône south of Lyon, was an important trading place — particularly for wine — and through its Jesuit college also had a longstanding educational history.
This is a very rare French provincial imprint. The verso of the title page leaves a space for the author’s signature as a guard against counterfeits (never filled in) and spaces for adding booksellers’ or stationers’ names, again not completed. Worldcat lists a single copy (Bibliothèque nationale).

First edition. A very rare collection of floral engravings for the use of goldsmiths, artists or needleworkers, this copy evidently used by an artist at an early date (perhaps the Nicolas Despeche, whose 1684 inscription appears at the foot of the title). With 20 plates in all the collection comprises the 10 plates from the Livres de Fleurs (including the title) plus an additional 10 plates (4 signed in the plate by Vauquer with the imprint of N. Langlois, the remainder unsigned) evidently combined in the early 1680s from the selection of Vauquer plates offered in Paris by publisher De Poilly.
Vauquer (or Vauquier) was an etcher, draughtsman and gold-engraver (1621-86). His superb prints show a ‘delicate line, after his own compositions and those of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, his master and kinsman. Apart from a few biblical subjects on black ground for medals, snuff-boxes or watch-cases, he mostly represented flowers in bouquets or in vases, baskets, garlands or friezes. These were published by Nicolas Langlois (1640–1703) or François de Poilly (1623–93), often grouped in series: Livre de fleurs (10 pls); Vases de fleurs propre pour les peintres, brodeurs et dessinateurs (40 pls); Livres de fleurs propre pour les orfèvres et graveurs (8 pls, signed v. f. with the annotation à Blois). According to Mariette, Vauquer was skilled in drawing flowers and particularly excelled in engraving flowers and other decorations on jewellery’ (Grove Art).
Contemporary and later collections of these plates are rare and show considerable variation, the individual parts and probably the plates themselves sold and bound to order. Our collection has the 10 numbered plates of the Livre de Fleurs, each (save the title) showing a well chosen bunch of flowers in globular glass vases, exquisitely rendered; then the four following plates with the Langlois imprints show stems of different flowers bound with ribbons, while the remaining plates are detailed studies of flower forms. Dunthorne, Flower and Fruit Prints of the 18th and early 19th centuries (1938), 317.

A rare large-format toy theatre print with figures for cutting out and mounting from a performance at Astley’s Amphitheatre, which was then managed by Andrew Ducrow, the father of circus equestrianism. The plate is unsigned other than by the publisher William West and is unattributed in the British Museum print catalogue, but it is of high quality. The BM copy was acquired with the nineteenth-century collection of toy theatre prints assembled by Ralph Thomas, who had made a tentative attribution to William Blake in Notes and Queries in 1898 (June 4th, p. 455). The British Museum did not adopt the attribution, though there is certainly something of Blake’s style in the print. William West was the pioneer of the Regency toy theatre print, commissioning work from both Cruickshank brothers, Flaxman, Dighton and Brooke.