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Danish artist and cloud classifier Philippe Weilbach was an amateur meteorologist who takes a significant part in the history of recording clouds and other atmospheric phenomena. Among other observations he was the first to describe and define the cumulonimbus cloud, published here in this memoir containing a history of cloud study (noting it began with Lamarck and the Englishman, Luke Howard) and his own observations from Copenhagen and elsewhere. It first appeared with only three plates in the Annuaire de l’Institut météorologique du Danemark and was reprinted with the fourth plate (with the image of the cumulonimbus cloud) in the Annales du Bureau central Météorologique de France for 1880 from which this a contemporaneously bound extract.

The author participated in the 1891 Munich meeting of the International Meteorological Committee, which culminated in the publication of the first International Cloud Atlas in 1896.

A spectacular album containing 65 views and scenes in Northern India at the close of the nineteenth century, with superb images of Benares, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, Delhi and Mussoorie. together with several fine photographs of Indian workers, notably in the tea plantations of Chaubatia. Included is a series of haunting images of the ruins of the imperial residency at Lucknow, which was largely destroyed in the Indian rebellion of 1857, and a view of the site of the massacre at Cawnpore. The first two photographs in the album are signed in ink by G.W. Lawrie and given the style, period and geography of the remainder it is likely they are also by the studio of this prolific Scottish-born photographer. Six final photographs are of Port Said, Egyptians, Armenians and are Sudanians, of which some after French photographer Hippolyte Arnoux.
1. Juggernaut Cr. Mysore. 2. A Mysore temple. 3. Marble rocks. Jubbulpore. 4. Indore. Tomb of the late Mahraja [Tukojirao Holkar II]. 5. View from Cheena. ‘Naini Tal’. 6. Naini Tal. 7. Loucun. Naini Tal. 8. Naini Tal – showing lake. 9. Group of hill coolies. 10. Naini Tal group of hill women. 11. A picturesque bit on the road from Ranikhet. 12. Grass cutters. Chowbattia. 13. Group of women sorting tea. Chowbattia. 14. Tea sorting. Chowbattia. 15. Simla. 16. Bridge of boats. Benares. 17. The great mosque of Aurenzebe [Aurangzebe]. Benares. 18. Benares. Cremation Ghal. Showing Hindu burning their dead. 19. Buddhist carving. Benares. 20. Golden temple. Benares. 21. Bailey Guard Gate. Lucknow. 22. The Residency. Lucknow. 23. The Residency Ruins. Lucknow. 24. The Residency. Lucknow. 25. Lucknow. The Residency showing the Shannon’s guns. 26. Interior view of Fort. Lucknow. 27. Lucknow. The great Emambara & Mosque. 28. View from clock tower. Lucknow. 29. A gateway. Lucknow. 30. A gateway. Lucknow [untitled, another view]. 31. The Hossainabad. Lucknow. 32. Hossainabad Emambara. Lucknow. 33. Wingfield Park. Lucknow. 34. Lucknow. The first King of Oudh, Mausoleum. 35. Dilkoosha Palace ruins. Lucknow. 36. Dilkoosha Palace. Lucknow. 37. Sadut Ali Shah’s Mausoleum. Lucknow. 38. Ornamental Gate. Lucknow. 39. Memorial Well. Cawnpore. 40. Suttee Chowra Ghat. Scene of the Massacre. Cawnpore. 41. Gateway of Taj. Agra. 42. The Marble Taj. Agra. 43. The Taj from the river. Agra. 44. Agra. The marble screen around the tomb inside Taj. 45. Motte Musjid Mosque. Agra. 46. The Mausoleum of Akbar. Secundra [Sikandra]. 47. Elephant in masonry. Delhi. 48. The Cashmere Gate. Delhi. 49. Arhai-din-kar-jhopra temple. Ajmere. 50. Ancient carved pillars, in the fortress. Gwalior. 51. The Mall. Mussoorie. 52. A bit of bazaar. Mussoorie. 53. General view. Mussoorie. 54. Kempty Falls. Mussoorie. 55. General view. Mussoorie. 56. The snow. Cashmere. 57. Cashmere. 58. Cashmere. 59 & 60. Indian Servants (2 smaller images 150 × 110 mm). 61 & 62. Indian Servants (2 smaller images 150 × 110 mm). 63 & 64. Indian Servants (2 images 150 × 110 mm). 64 & 65. Goorkha. Indian Soldiers (2 images 150 × 110 mm). 66. Port Said. 67. Armenian Girl. 68. Armenians. 69. Egyptian water carrier (after Arnoux). 70. Egyptians (after Arnoux). 71. Soudaniens. (after Arnoux).

A series of eighteen superb photographs of processions of Indian princes and soldiers at the Delhi Durbar. The 1903 Durbar was held to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as Emperor and Empress of India --- the King and Queen did not attend but were represented by the Duke of Connaught and the Viceroy Lord Curzon (both appearing in these photographs). Many of the Indian princes rode on elephants (depicted in six of the photographs here) and were dressed in their finest costumes and jewels. Three of the prints depict the Durbar amphitheatre and Viceroy’s pavilion forming a panorama of connected images. The Durbar was also the occasion for the opening of the Delhi exhibition, the biggest display of Indian arts and crafts hitherto assembled, and the exhibition building is the subject of two of the prints here.

Photographer Sidney Herbert Dagg (1862-1930) moved to India in 1891 and worked as an assistant to G.W.Lawrie (G. W. Lawrie & Co) before establishing his own firm, with offices at Mussoorie and Allahabad.

First edition of this important attempt at a universal non-sectarian liturgy, inspired by David Williams and Benjamin Franklin’s London Philosophical ‘Club of Thirteen’. It extended Williams’s experiments as minister to a Highgate Presbyterian congregation, reflecting contemporary debates around the Thirty-Nine Articles, and was widely influential notably in France, where it was applauded by both Rousseau and Voltaire.

The Club of Thirteen was a Radical intellectual club, rather like the Birmingham Lunar Society, and its members included Williams, Franklin, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Josiah Wedgwood, Robert Owen, William Hodgson, and Thomas Day. It met at Old Slaughter's Coffee House on St Martin's Lane, or at the Swan at Westminster Bridge.

‘On Easter Sunday, 7 April 1776, Williams opened a chapel in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, and read from the Liturgy on the Universal Principles of Religion and Morality, the collaborative production of members of the Club of Thirteen... The preface to this universalist Liturgy of 1776 describes the experiment as a form of social worship 'in which all men may join who acknowledge the existence of a supreme intelligence, and the universal obligations of morality' (Liturgy, x–xi). Its format, containing an order for morning and for evening prayer and a collection of hymns and psalms, is reminiscent of an Anglican format, but the liturgy avoids all dogmatic statements of belief beyond an acknowledgement of the wisdom and goodness of a supreme intelligence and the moral obligations of a simple deism that celebrates nature as implying the existence of God. All specifically Christian doctrines of faith are carefully excluded. Copies of the liturgy were sent to Voltaire and Frederick the Great of Prussia, and in Paris in the summer of 1776 Bentley presented a copy to Rousseau. All three responded enthusiastically. Voltaire wrote: It is a great comfort to me, at the age of eighty-two years, to see the tolerance openly teach’d in your country, and the God of all mankind no more pent up in a narrow tract of land. That notable truth was worthy of your pen and of your tongue’ (Oxford DNB). Though quite well-represented in British collections, ESTC lists US copies at Union Theological Seminary and Penn only; Worldcat adds Columbia, Yale and Emory. It is notably scarce in commerce with Rare Book Hub recording no copies at auction.

Sole edition of a rare illustrated poetical collection by a so-far unidentified woman of the English community at the Breton town of Dinan. The subscribers list contains 52 names, mainly English and mainly women. The romantic plates are very accomplished but unsigned, save by the printer Mainoë at Nantes. They are captioned with excerpts from the verses. No UK copies located by JISC/COPAC.

First edition, one of 275 copies on Hollande (after 20 on Japon) signed by the artist, additionally inscribed by him to French politician Joseph Paul-Boncour in 1927 with a pen sketch and six additional drawings, plus some of the illustrations with captions overwritten by the artist in pencil. Réquin’s collection is valuable as a record of the wide range of nationalities present in the Northern France campaigns in 1917. There are portraits of French, Belgian, British, Scots and Welsh soldiers, but also North African, Sengalese, Indian, Russian, and Turkish troops. This copy was evidently given by the artist to Paul-Boncour as a participant in the 1927 Geneva Conference on arms limitation. Réquin adds six drawings, including four satirical sketches of the Geneva Conference itself (which he probably attended as an official artist). These large sketches include portraits of some of the major participants, including the Eton and Oxford-educated British diplomat Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, one of the architects of the League of Nations. JISC/Copac locates no UK copies.

Second and enlarged edition, which includes the first edition of the second part, on bookbinding (the first edition was published by the author at Dijon in 1818). Mairet’s is one of the important early accounts of lithography with a detailed account of the processes of preparation, the application of images to the stone and of the printing itself (with a plate of a lithographic press). Despite the importance of his treatise on lithography, Mairet is best known as a binder. A native of Dijon, he established himself as a binder and paper-dealer around the year 1806, he later worked mainly as a paper manufacturer. ‘He published, among other works, an Essai sur la reliure et leblanchissement des livres [the present book] in 1824, much of which was used by Lenormand and embodied in the Roret Manuels on Binding... he is probably the greatest binder of the time in the use of classical motives, and his work has much charm and delicacy’ (Ramsden, French Bookbinders, p. 133). The Essai sur la reliure is particularly valuable as a first-hand account of contemporary methods of colouring binding materials and producing decorative effects such marbling on both paper and leather. Bigmore & Wyman II, 14 (’The new edition was printed in a far superior manner to the old one, and the plates are much better executed... Copies are now seldom met with’); Pollard, Early Bookbinding Manuals 52; Twyman Lithography 1800-1850, pp. 92-95.

First edition, one of 150 unnumbered copies on Arnold’s hand-made paper (of which 140 were for sale). All the woodblocks and vellum copies were burnt in the Ballantyne Press fire of December 1899. This copy is from the library of Uranian poet and publisher Francis Edwin Murray. Watry B28; Ransom, Vale Press, 28; Tomkinson, Vale Press, 28

A stunning album of views of Mount Fuji, pictured in sequential stages of the year in changing atmospheric conditions. The woodblocks are prepared and printed with unusual care, and the subtle gradations of tone and shade visible in the mountain and its clouds are interpreted through variable inking and impressions of the blocks on soft, translucent paper. The preface by Chōshū Kobayashi explains that the artist Oishi Shuga observed the mountain over three hundred days, from winter to spring and back to spring, studying their changing clouds and atmosphere.

This is an early issue of this celebrated but bibliographically complicated book and is dated Bunsei 5 [1822], the date of the first editions. It is probably impossible to ascribe primacy to the known copies of the various issues which exhibit numerous variations among blocks, impressions and configuration. Ours show excellent impressions of the fine black lines printed while the blocks were still in good condition and a pleasing subtlety in the inking of the wash-like infills. Copies surveyed are all different and can contain between 15 and 33 double-page plates, sometimes with captions, sometimes without, and with a range of tints and colours — ours is primarily black and grey with some tints for the clouds. Our issue also contains an afterword not present in all copies by the artist himself in which he explains that he had seen Mount Fuji from many points of view but that Suruga city is the best vantage point, and he offers a classification of the clouds, their names and shapes and of the various weather conditions he observes. cf. Hillier, Art of the Japanese Book II, pp. 872-3 (another variant, with fewer plates, incorrectly attributed to Myuoo Shuga).

First edition of this rare posthumous sale catalogue of the notable collection of prints amassed by the voracious Lille collector Libert de Beaumont (1742-1798) --- now widely dispersed among collections around the world. Aside from master prints by the likes of Durer, Rembrandt and Callot Liber de Beaumont was an enthusiastic collector of British prints and the catalogue includes sections devoted to Bartolozzi (including numerous prints after Angelika Kauffman), Earlom, Burke, Tomkins, Smyth, Caroline Watson, Knight and many others. The sale included a fine section of medals and another of shells.

‘Il amassa la plus considérable collection iconographique qu'il soit permis à un particulier de posséder. Pendant plus de trente années il n’a cessé de l'accroître : nulle peine, nul sacrifice ne l’arrêtaient quand il s’agissait d'acquérir une belle pièce qu'il n’avait pas. L’on raconte encore aujourd'hui à Lille qu’il arriva un jour que pour obtenir l'oeuvre d’un maître quil désirait, il vendit une bonne et belle ferme en plein rapport; (Archives historiques et littéraires du nord de la France, 1837, p. 241).
Lugt 5807; Getty Provenance Index F-A1186; Duplessis 2081.

A journey through Napoleonic-era Europe as a striking large-format engraved ‘Game of Goose’. The sixty three game squares include the Imperial palace at St Petersburg, the cathedral at Moscow, Westminster Bridge, the Dublin Exchange, Edinburgh cathedral, several French cathedrals, the mosque of Hagia Sofia at Constantinople, concluding with the Arc de Triomphe (which was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 and was still under construction at the time of publication) with a view of the Palais Impérial des Tulieries beyond. The arch is surmounted by the imperial eagle. The print is undated but was advertised in the Journal de l’Imprimerie in 1813. De Vinck, pag. 50, n°120.

A striking and moving memorial to a young boy, a vision of a child’s paradise with chromolithograph scrapbook cuttings of birds, horses, children, dancers, flowers and foliage, together with cuttings of hair (some woven). It combines two popular Victorian domestic crafts of hair art and scrapbooking, within an accomplished (but probably also domestic) wooden frame in the gothic style. With it supersized hair-carrying birds dwarfing diminutive dancers this is an inadvertently unsettling piece of Victorian naïve art.

A French lithographic stone for printing fruiterer’s labels, for oranges, reine claudes and mirabelle plums, a strikingly solid example of the physical mass of stones used for printing even such ephemeral items as labels. Even this comparatively small stone weighs 14 kg (over 2 stone).

Basil Spence and John Hutton worked together as architect and mural painter for the Society of Mural Painters’ RIBA exhibition in 1953. The scheme that they picked to work on was one for the interior of an office building. David Rock designed an interior with a mezzanine and interesting views throughout. On one side of the room was to be a mural with nine full height muses by John Hutton. Hutton, however, never came up with the other six in time for the exhibition, so Rock simply made them up in Hutton’s style. Many years later a book was written about John Hutton where the author mistook the six muses that Rock had created for Hutton’s own work, arguing that the six muses sketch had been mislaid over time! At the opening of the exhibition, however, there was a lot of embarrassment as Hutton had motioned Rock into a group and introduced him to his model Marigold, whom Rock had only met in her dressing gown when he collected Hutton’s sketches. After a few seconds of confusion Rock said “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on!” Exhibited: John Hutton New Zealand Tour, National Art Gallery, Wellington, et al, 1972, cat no. 2.

First edition. One of the first French painting manuals, often cited as containing the first engravings of the artist’s palette. The twenty numbered plates are those by Corneille referred to on the title while the thirty unnumbered plates are the etchings by Sébastien Leclerc, with their own title-page directly after the text: Figures d’academie pour aprendre; désiner, gravées par Sebastien LeClerc (A Paris Chez N. Langlois, rue St. Jacques; la Victoire).
Neither set of plates was invariably included and the latter plates are preceded by Jombert’s 1751 title-page, as in several other copies, suggesting Les premiers Élemens de la peinture pratique was reissued in the eighteenth century, using original copies/sheets and adding a further suite of plates.
Cicognara, 314: ‘Libretto piuttosto raro e succinto che ha qualche merito per la succosa con cui è scritto: ma si estende presso ché esclusivamente sui preparativi meccanici dell’arte della pittura e le tavole sono inserte fra il testo dell’opera.’

First edition. One of 300 copies. Charles Martin (1884-1934) created this account of the Western Front in blank verse and graphic illustration, disguising its anti-militaristic sentiment under the title Sous les Pots de Fleurs, evidently to tease the censors who may or may not have seen the play on words (it might better read Sous le Flots de Peur, ‘Under waves of fear’). Martin’s art deco style was already well developed in his colourful pre-war contributions to the Gazette de Bon Ton, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, but here, working under frightening conditions, his tone is understandably darker. Like several other artists, he served as a camouflage officer, a serjeant in the ‘section de camouflage’, stationed at Bergues. Carteret, Modernes, V, p. 133.

A substantial collection of plates depicting upholstered chairs, sofas, stools and other seats, evidently a maker’s or vendor’s collection with additional tracings and drawings. Most are taken from the bimonthly journal Le Garde-meuble ancien et moderne with others from L’ameublement, Le Magasin de meuble and Le Moniteur de l’ameublement and they include a range of Second Empire styles together with fashionable reproductions of earlier styles. Carved wood (varnished, lacquered, gilt or ‘exotype’) is usually paired with elaborate upholstery in decorative fabrics trimmed with passmenterie. Makers and suppliers are often mentioned.

A physionotrace portrait of General Samuel Smith (1752-1839), American Senator and Representative from Maryland and an original member of the Society of the Cincinatti in 1783.

Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes).

Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson. An original portrait, together with the copper plate and twelve impressions cost $25 for gentlemen, $35 for ladies, presumably because of the more elaborate details of hair, though many male sitters (including Smith) sported elaborate braids.

Number 104 of 150 numbered copies of this facsimile edition of Estève’s remarkable, near-miniature wartime sketchbook (1939-1940), with introductory booklet by Françoise Chapon. Estève (1904-2001) was essentially self-taught, working under the clear influence of Cézanne and Braque, and hovering between representation and abstraction. His wartime notebook is a truly exceptional representation of a French soldier’s experience, superbly reproduced here by Éditions des Cendres.

A superb survey of turn-of-the century British domestic architecture by an important French photographer who used cyanotype to notable effect. These examples of seaside ‘cottages’ in East Kent and Sussex depicts an array of then recently constructed high quality houses, a good number of which survive. Broadly within the Arts and Crafts tradition, the houses fuse a variety of older English vernacular styles with modern innovations, notably in the range of moulded and cut bricks and tiles.

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 are now very rare indeed. Jisc locates no UK copies. FirstSearch locates US copies at Columbia, Princeton and Lawrence Technological University only.