German

First edition of Lydis’s astrological dream dictionary, complete with the moveable volvelle horoscope and striking plates printed in colours and gold. Among the numerous dream motifs Lydis illustrates: the whore, the angel, flight, locusts, insects (she actually depicts a spider), sea creatures, suicide and the devil.
A fragile book, this is among the early works by Austrian born Lydis (1887-1970) who settled in Paris in 1926. She became known for her daring prints celebrating same-sex and bisexual love (notably her 1926 portfolio, Lesbiennes) and she later illustrated numerous deluxe editions of Boccaccio, Louÿs, Baudelaire, Mirbeau and Valéry. Lydis had no formal artistic training (or at least her education is obscure) but her work was no doubt inspired by the freedom of twentieth-century Paris. She escaped the Nazis during the occupation, living briefly with her partner Erica Marx in England, before the couple emigrated to Buenos Aires. Correa, Mariette Lydis, 4.4 (with an estimated edition of 150 copies).

First fully illustrated edition of the most popular German fairy tale books of the nineteenth century. This edition follows the first edition of the previous year which was illustrated with just a wood engraved frontispiece. Deutsches Märchenbuch contains eighty-eight tales, plus Bechstein’s introduction and an allegory, Des Märechens Geburt (The Birth of the Fairy Tale) in which two bored children are brought a gift in the form of an egg (the fairy tale) by a bird called Fantasy. The allegory was dropped in most of the many later editions. Many of the tales are derived from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, though Bechstein’s collection came to far exceed theirs in popularity.
Several of the steel engraved plates are signed ‘Schurig fec.’ (perhaps Karl Wilhelm Schurig?) and ‘G. Alboth sc.’, others are signed ‘Brennäuser fecit.’ (i.e. Andreas Wolfgang Brennhäuser). They are delightful miniatures in high romantic style with decorative captions and ornaments with gothic details. They depict: Des kleinen Hirten Glückstraum (The little Shepherd’s Dream of Happiness); Das tapfere Schneiderlein (The brave little Tailor); Hensel und Grethel (Hansel and Gretel); Staar und Badewän[n]elein (The Starling and the little Bathtub); Hans im Glücke (Hans in Luck); Tischlein deck dich, Essel streck Dich, Knüppel aus dem Sack (he Wishing-Table, The Golden-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack); Schneeweisschen (Snow White); Dornen-Röschen (Sleeping Beauty); Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) and Helene. From the edition of 1853 (the twelfth) the current illustrations were replaced by those by Ludwig Richter.

Velcurio’s popular textbook of Aristotelian physics, printed at Lyon by Louis Cloquemin and Étienne Michel, here with an early English binding and provenance.
Johannes Velcurio or Johannes Bernhardi of Feldkirch (1490-1534) was professor of rhetoric and physics at the university of Wittenberg, where he was a humanist colleague of Melanchthon. This posthumously published Commentarium on Aristotle’s physics first appeared in Tubingen in 1542 and ran to at least twenty five editions before 1595, including those from in Basel, Erfurt, Cologne, Tübingen, Strasbourg, Wittenberg, Lyon, and London. The fourth book is devoted to Aristotle’s De anima. In England, as elsewhere it was used as a university textbook and appears, for example, among the small textbooks purchased by students at Cambridge (see P. Gaskell, Books bought by Whitgift’s Pupils in the 1570s, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7, 3 (1979), pp. 284-293). It is unclear who the ‘John Freeman’ who inscribed the title-page in Greek at an early date was, but several John Freemans appear in the Cambridge University registers in the last years of the sixteenth century.
The binding bears identical blindstamped centrepiece tools to a contemporary London binding illustrated by David Pearson in English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 as Fig 3.35 (BL 1492.f.43, Selneccer, Evangeliorum et epistolarum dominicalium, Frankfurt, 1575) with similar spine bands and blind-ruled borders. At the front and rear are two endleaves (each) using waste apparently from an unidentified edition of Justinian’s Institutes, each with further early notes (mainly pen tests).

By an otherwise unidentified female artist, this is a rare large-format album of lithographs of the famous catholic Bavarian passion play at Oberammergau. The artist’s name is given only as initials ‘M. C. S. D’ on the plates and wrapper, but this copy bears a contemporary manuscript addition to the initials, which thus reads ‘M. C. S. Dawkins done by Herself’. It is additionally inscribed ‘with love’ to Major M. G. Best.
Performed decennially since 1634, the Oberammergau plays told the story of Christ’s passion, with a large cast drawn from local villages forming immense tableaux vivants with spoken biblical texts in the vernacular. In the nineteenth century it became a major attraction for well-to-do Grand Tourists and drew significant numbers of English visitors (so much so that the pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook established an Oberammergau office in 1880). The passion play was widely reported in contemporary English-language journals, adding to its attraction among English visitors (mainly protestant) who were curious about this ancient catholic theatrical tradition. We have been unable to discover anything substantial about the artist, but its fair to assume she made the journey to Oberammergau herself. WorldCat lists the V&A copy only in the UK. In the US there are copies at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake (IL) and WRHS (OH).

An attractive and elaborate example of German devotional Klosterarbeit, typical of enclosed communities, usually (but not always) convents of nuns. The decorative border here is an exuberant baroque combination of flowers, leaves and stems enclosing the parchment painting, within a border of gold cut-paper stars on a feathery cut blue paper. Dating these pieces is not easy, since traditional styles were both conservative and enduring. The support here is laid paper with a partially visible watermark with monogram (SME or SVE?)which we have so far been unable to identify (the applied silk work partially obscuring it). A small manuscript note on an old paper reinforcement at the back bears script in what appears to be an eighteenth-century hand.

Saint Paul appears with his customary attributes of a sword, recalling his martyrdom (he was beheaded in Rome in AD 67) and book, representing his letters in the New Testament.

Headed ‘Tanhauser. 1er Acte. 1ere Scène’ this brief manuscript note describes and illustrates designs for each act of the production of Tannhäuser consistent with the infamous Paris production of March 1861.
Act I Scene 1 (for the orgiastic ballet of the Venusberg) is described in just over 5 lines as ‘Une vaste grotte souterraine éclairée par un jour fantastique, au fond tombe une cascade dont les eaux vont se perdre dans un lac bleu. A gauche apparition d’une grotte voluptueuse’. A sketch diagram shows the arrangement of two curtains and three wings. Scene 2 is described as a ‘Une belle vallée éclairée par un soleil brillant, au fond à droite le Wartburg à droite, à gauche, le Hersvelberg, à droite un chemin descendant du Wartburg, sur une éminence, une image de la vierge’, with a diagram showing the arrangement of curtain, wings and position of the Wartburg castle on the right. Overleaf the scene change for Act I, set in the Minnesingers’ Hall in the Wartburg castle is described in just over 8 lines with a diagram showing the receding perspective of the majestic hall, together with 5 lines describing the return to the valley of second scene of Act I for the final act, with changing lighting effects for dusk, night, dawn and day with clouds for the apparition of Venus.
The instructions, a brief outline sketch rather than detailed designs or instructions, follow the arrangements of the Paris version, modified from the Dresden premier of 1845, with the ballet brought forward to the very first scene to accommodate Parisian expectations. While the final design of the production was divided between three scenographers (Charles-Antoine Cambon, Édouard Desplechin and Auguste Alfred Rubé) these notes have the character of a preliminary overview, or perhaps a note for potential lighting effects. Detailed designs, maquettes and several contemporary prints exist for the production, and provide an interesting comparison for this ephemeral and unsigned note. The thumbnail sketch for Act I Scene 2 sems to confirm, for example, that it is a prior sketch rather than one made by an eyewitness to the performance, with its rather different arrangement of the rocky precipice for the Wartburg castle depicted in the plans and prints. The identity of its maker remains thus far unknown, but is likely to have been a member of one of the various workshops and teams tasked with the overall conception of this momentous performance.
Wagner’s Paris Tannhäuser ranks as one of the most infamous and most-discussed opera performances of all time ― while it was greeted with jeers and critical disdain and was cancelled after the third night it cemented Wagner’s European cult, due in large part to the essay published by an attentive member of the audience, Charle Baudelaire, who in the following days rushed his seminal critique of the performance and defence of Wagner into print as Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris.

First edition of Mariette Lydis’s first book, number 70 of 100 copies on thick handmade paper and bound in bright yellow ‘duvetine’ cloth (the limitation notice mentions copies are either in ‘duvetine’ or in Chinese silk), complete with rare original box. Though described on the title as Chinese stories by Balàzs illustrated by Lydis, in fact the illustrations came first, with the 16 fables added in response — so the book is in effect a series of pictures ‘illustrated’ with text. Its genesis lay with Lydis (then Marietta Pachoffer-Karñy) and her friend, the Viennese progressive educationalist Eugenie Schwarzwald, who approached the Hungarian emigré poet and aesthetician Balàzs (who had composed the libretto for Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911) to write a text so that a book could be published. In order to have it ready for Christmas he had to write the sixteen tales in just three weeks, producing a series of strange and sometimes chilling tales true to the striking orientalism of the images. It was a great success — Thomas Mann extolled it as ‘a beautiful book’ in a press review, while a modern critic writes: ‘Not surprisingly [Balàzs] stuck to his favorite theme — human alienation... In these fables, Balàzs suggested that men could only unite with women in the utopian world of dreams and longing’. (Congdon, Exiles and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany, 2014, p. 104). Der Mantel der Träume has more recently been published in English as The Cloak of Dreams (Princeton, 2010).
The sixteen illustrations and fables are: Der Mantel der Träume; Li-Tai-Pe und der Dieb; Die Sonnenschirme; Der ungeschickte Gott; Die Opiumraucher; Der Floh; Das Alte Kind; Die Gottesräuber; Li-Tai-Pe und der Frühling; Die Ahnen; Der Mondfisch; Die Freunde; Die Rache des Kastanienbaumes; Tränenblick; Das Lehmkind and Der Sieger. The 20 illustrations are from watercolour miniatures and reproduce dates (Lugano 1921-2) and the artist’s initials ‘M.P.K’ [for Marietta Pachoffer-Karñy, from her first marriage in 1910 to Austrian businessman Julius Koloman Pachoffer-Karñy, who died April 1922].

A superb illuminated manuscript Ten Commandments, made at Bingen. The German text in calligraphic gothic hand, beneath a title ‘Die Zehn Gebote Gottes’ arranged on a rainbow forming a partially arched top to the sheet; the background contains a rich array of iconography in the style of a medieval manuscript, including Adam and Eve in paradise at the head on a decorated gold background, God in the heavens (with sun, moon and star), personifications of each of the sins, all arranged around a central tree of life linking heaven and earth. The central scene, on a silver mandala is a betrothal or wedding scene. Perhaps most striking of all is the richly painted azure ground, stippled with silver and overlaid with scrolling branches and leaves, inhabited by birds and animals. It is a splendid example of late nineteenth-century medievalism and the revival of the art of manuscript illumination, experienced in Germany as much as in other European countries, especially in the context of resurgent Roman Catholicism. The revival in Germany has been studied in detail by Michela Braesel (see ‘Medieval Elements in Nineteenth-Century German Illumination. Context and Models’ in The Revival of Medieval Illumination, ed. Thomas Coomans & Jan de Maeyer, Leuven, 2007). Little more has been discovered of the artist or the recipient, except that they were both members of a large Bingen family, of which several members appear to have emigrated to the United States.

First edition. Each plate is accompanied by an exotic love lyric by Schwabach (publisher, author and patron of Expressionism) ‘Die verliebten Billete des Prinzen Salamud’. The 18 plates reproduce Lydis’ orientalist miniatures in collotype and lithograph with gold and silver. The Müller firm had been established at Potsdam 1919 by Irmgard Kiepenheuer and Hans Müller. Kiepenhauer was an important figure in the artistic world of Weimar Berlin, hosting a cultural salon in Potsdam and being in personal contact with the most important contemporary artists — including many from the Bauhaus in Weimar. The firm issued several influential portfolios showcasing artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Pechstein, Christian Rohlfs, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

A regular copy of a total edition of 1100 copies (of which 100 copies were signed). Several different publisher’s bindings exist.

A striking needlework pattern for Berlin-work. ‘Berlin wool work is embroidery with Berlin wools or any type of thread or beads on canvas by means of copying a coloured chart known as a Berlin pattern. Almost exclusively confined to the 19th century, Berlin wool derived its name from the wool that came from Merino sheep in Saxony. It was taken to Gotha to be spun and on to Berlin to be dyed... Prior to the introduction of Berlin patterns it was very rare to find any indication about the choice of colour or threads. Berlin patterns were always coloured by hand at first, until the emergence of industrial printing techniques’ (V&A). Though the patterns (which rarely survive) usually originated in Germany, Berlin work was enthusiastically practised by women all over Europe and in North America.

First edition. A striking early Lydis production. Each plate is accompanied by an exotic love lyric by Schwabach (publisher, author and patron of Expressionism) ‘Die verliebten Billete des Prinzen Salamu’. The 18 plates reproduce Lydis’ orientalist miniatures in collotype and lithograph with gold and silver. The Müller firm had been established at Potsdam 1919 by Irmgard Kiepenheuer and Hans Müller. Kiepenhauer was an important figure in the artistic world of Weimar Berlin, hosting a cultural salon in Potsdam and being in personal contact with the most important contemporary artists — including many from the Bauhaus in Weimar. The firm issued several influential portfolios showcasing artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Pechstein, Christian Rohlfs, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. One of 1100 copies (of which 100 were signed).

A rare perspective peepshow depicting a boar hunt in a forest, with horses and dogs. Engelbrecht (1684-1756) produced many different designs of these sets in three sizes, of which ours is an example of the smallest (and rarest). They were designed to be viewed when slotted successively into a perspective viewing box but can equally be appreciated when standing in simple slots or stands. One of the parts is marked ‘N. 87’ in the plate. In this example the prints have been mounted in the early nineteenth-century. cf. Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows (2015), pp. 14–15 and David Robinson, ‘Augsburg Peepshows’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 188–191.�

A rare perspective peepshow depicting a stag hunt in a forest, with horses and dogs. Among the hunters is one with a rifle, and two with horns. Engelbrecht (1684-1756) produced many different designs of these sets in three sizes, of which ours is an example of the smallest (and rarest). They were designed to be viewed when slotted successively into a perspective viewing box but can equally be appreciated when standing in simple slots or stands. One of the parts is marked ‘N. 87’ in the plate. In this example the prints have been mounted in the early nineteenth-century. cf, Ralph Hyde, Paper Peepshows (2015), pp. 14–15 and David Robinson, ‘Augsburg Peepshows’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 188–191.�

A French edition, translated from the German original by Francois Jean Philibert Aubert de Vitry. A series of dialogues addressed to young children (a boy and a girl) aged four and five, emphasising all the essential virtues of parenthood. The attractive aquatint plates were probably issued with the original edition and include several delightful family scenes. The first French edition appeared in 1825 and the date of 1837 for this reprint is taken from the Princeton Cotsen catalogue. cf. Barbier, II 1010; Querard VIII 508-10.

First edition of this copiously illustrated treatise on chiromancy, physiognomy and astrology, which includes three fine woodcuts by Hans Baldung, former apprentice to Albrecht Dürer. They are: the large title portrait of the author, the final full-page decorative arms and one physiognomical diagram of a man and a woman (p. 5 in the second part) — all three show clear echoes of Dürer’s style. The book was printed for the author, who was an adviser to Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, the dedicatee (it was to Cardinal Albrechtt that Martin Luther had addressed his 95 Theses in 1517).
Indagine (1467-1537) was a Carthusian prior and humanist theologian who saw no conflict between orthodox faith and the occult sciences. The book was widely read across Europe and frequently reprinted, with a small format octavo edition from Frankfurt in the same year, a vernacular German edition appearing the following year, and an English translation in 1558 (with at least 12 more editions in English before 1700). It was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559.
Though we have been unable to identify the early owner of this copy, whose monogram appears on each cover, the early inscription is from Rainold, Marquis of Canhilac (Languedoc). Adams I 88; VD16 R 3108; Mende, Hans Baldung Grien, 458-460. Worldcat: Cambridge, Leeds, Folger (portrait mostly lacking), Duke, Princeton (2 copies, one lacking a leaf), Philadelphia College of Physicians and UCLA outside continental Europe.

First edition in French. A European success, Lafontaine was as popular in France as in his native Germany and the book was evidently read in French in England (copies were imported by De Boffe). The Monthly Review of December 1813 contained the following notice: ‘This novel betrays many incongruities; among which may be reckoned the description of the Dutch naval captain who talks metaphysics, and that of a prudent mother who forbids her daughter’s marriage because the lovers had not sufficient courage to elope. Some of the female characters exhibit an infantine simplicity, which the author seems to have mistaken and substituted for the innocence of youth...’ Worldcat: Yale and Iowa only outside Europe. No UK copies in JISC/COPAC.

A striking and beautiful single sheet of brokatpapier, with devotional images printed in gilt in a style usually associated with Augsburg. This uncut sheet may have been destined for endpapers, each image neatly fitting an octavo-sized book.

A collection of children’s stories evidently written by a father (perhaps Herr Schmutzer, whose stamp appears in each) for two young daughters. Each volume is a separate story telling of the girls’ adventures around the world. The text is in German throughout and every page bears a large illustration. A terrifying insight into one early-twentieth century father’s idea of a family entertainment.

Das buch von den beiden Babys. [n.d. c. 1902]. Small 4to (206 × 165 mm), pp. [22], alternating text and drawings. A tale of parental neglect: a family outing on a steam train goes terribly wrong.

‘...Laurentia und Emerentia Stutzlmeier’. 1902. Folio (330 × 210 mm), ff. [30] (the last blank) of which 28 each bear text and a large drawing. Card wrappers, loose in cloth backed boards. The tale of two young sisters lost in the forest during a family picnic. Rescued from a wolf by a kindly hermit they embark on a series of miraculous adventures with a cartload of magic pears and a menagerie of animals. Reunited with their parents they return to the woods to find the hermit dying; they bury him and he is borne aloft by angels.

‘Die gar wundersame geschichte von den beiden Babys in der Techanei’. 1904. Folio (325 × 210 mm), ff. [56], of which 54 each bear text and a large drawing. Crudely sewn in cloth-backed boards, uniform with the above. The father takes his daughters out on an excursion, but an encounter with a witch separates the girls from him. Kidnapped in the witch’s house, they elude her protective snake, toad and cat and escape in a paper boat. Reunited with their father they embark on a series of terrifying adventures under his protection: he slaughters all assailants with a pistol, sword and bare hands, leaving a trail of bloodshed. A return to a derelict house scattered with the skeletons of pets and family members begins a new chapter, before the trio return home in a magical amphibious horse-drawn cart.

‘Die Geschichte von die beiden Babys und die Reise um die Erde’. 1910. Folio (340 × 205 mm), ff. [42], of which 41 each have text and a large drawing. Cloth backed boards. In this final volume Herr Schmutzer oversteps the mark. Taking his young daughters on a round-the-world trip in a self-propelled car (Gibraltar, Africa, Egypt, Persia, China, Siberia, The North Pole) he indulges in the worst kind of xenophobic violence against most of the inhabitants of the known world, all in the interests of the protection of his daughters.

First edition, rare, of this collection of children’s songs. Ludovica Brentano, later baroness Desbordes (1787-1854), affectionately known as Lulu, was grand daughter of Sophie von La Roche (the first widely known German female novelist) and she became patron of the Grimm brothers; contributing two tales to their Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Worldcat: NYPL and Harvard in US, BL in UK.

George Woodward, affectionately dubbed ‘Mustard George’ by his contemporaries, was one of the pioneers of English caricature. Like his drinking-partner Thomas Rowlandson, Woodward absorbed high and low culture omnivorously and paid keen attention to contemporary politics.

A Political Fair is ‘a fantastic survey of the international situation’ in 1807 and is considered one of Woodward’s finest images, the print catalogue of the British Museum devoting two full pages to its complex allegories. At the heart of the fair is a large booth (‘The Best-Booth in the Fair’) representing Great Britain holding aloft on its platform images of Britannia, John Bull, together with an Irishman, Scotsman and Welsh harpist gathered convivially around a punchbowl, while a waiter sweeps into the chamber below with a vast joint of roast beef on his platter. All this was typical of Woodward’s patriotism and was intended to portray the essential unity of the nation amidst the host of clamouring figures in the neighbouring booths representing the other nations. Napoleon, in tricorn and feathers, rebuffs a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about his King with the words ‘I never change Mynheer after the goods are taken out of the Shop’. High up on the right, the American booth displays a placard advertising ‘Much ado about Nothing with the Deserter’, a reference to the friction between Britain and the United States over recent defections from British to American ships and the ban on armed British ships in American ports. The Danish booth on the left advertises ‘The English Fleet and The Devil to Pay’ in reference to the hideous bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in September that year.

Musical and theatrical references abound, with many of the placards punning on the titles of plays and musical performances then showing in London: Much ado about Nothing, All’s well that ends well (Shakespeare), The Padlock (Bickerstaffe), The Deserter (Dibdin), The Double Dealer (on the Russian booth, by Congreve) and The English Fleet (Dibdin again). BM Satires, 10763