Search

A rare moveable volvelle perpetual calendar depicting the French royal family as restored after the fall of Napoleon. The dials give years from 1816 to 1823, the dates for days of the week, along with lengths of day and night, sunrise and sunset, the month and the corresponding sign of the zodiac. A calendar giving traditional Gregorian dates such as this takes on a political aspect, printed as it was after an era in which strenuous efforts had been made to suppress the Gregorian calendar in favour of the revolutionary calendar and dates (years, months and days of the week) entirely reinvented.

The portraits of the royal family (Louis XVIII), the duc and duchesse d’Angoulême and the comtes d’Artois and de Berri, are placed above an architectural frieze depicting Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette bidding farewell to their families before execution. The absence of the duchesse de Berri, who married the duke only in June 1816 provides the latest likely date of publication, though it is probable that the print appeared earlier — in December 1815, in preparation for the new year. We have found no record of this calendar print in the usual online resources, either in Europe or further afield.

Sole edition. A thin man in shabby clothes kneels in prayer before a candle on a chair, his toes poking through his worn shoes. The window panes above a heavy locked strongbox are broken. ‘The miser confesses he owns nine houses, estates in Essex, mortgages in Hertford, large landed speculations in Russell Square and the neighbourhood, reversions of estates, trading ventures, “Mermaid” sloop, funded property, Government securities, &c. &c. he is beseeching an increase in his means, success in investments, and a rise in the “Stocks”’ (Grego). Rowlandson produced a series of such ‘Prayers’ as squibs in 1801. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, II, 30.

A spectacular renaissance illustrated book, the first edition with the detailed and dramatic double-page etched plates by Jost Amman. First published at Lyon in 1529 with single-page woodcuts (reprinted with the same woodcuts in 1546) there were also Venice editions of 1569, 1571 and 1576 with quarter-page woodcuts.

A vast encyclopaedic work, the Catalogus gloriae mundi sought to set out the hierarchy of creation —animate and inanimate, from the heavens themselves to the governments, laws and sciences of humanity. Its particular value was in setting out orders of precedency and protocol in law and ceremony, which probably accounts for its interest to publisher Sigmund Feyerabend, who enlisted Amman to create large emblematic plates for this edition, derived from the earlier woodcut illustrations. They are:

1. A genealogy with insignia of royal houses (including European houses and those of Persia, Egypt, Israel etc); 2. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; 3. a mandala depicting the ranks of the hierarchy of the heavens; 4. a sitting of the papal court; 5. an imperial council; 6. a regal council; 7. a judicial court; 8. the nobility; 9. the military ranks; 10. The liberal arts and sciences (14 female personifications); 11. the mechanical arts (7 female personifications); 12. a geocentric cosmography. Andresen, A. Jost Amman, 32-43; The New Hollstein: German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts 1400-1700, 1998, VI.144. A very scarce book. Worldcat lists non-European copies at Folger, Getty and Huntington libraries only.

A revealing illustration of a woodblock printing workshop in Tokyo in the 1870s. The woodblock print provides a wealth of information on the woodblock printing industry in Meiji era Japan, including paper-cutting, printing, bookbinding, fan-making, displaying and selling. There is a clear division of labour between men and women, working together in the same scene. Fans are hung from the ceiling, and at the front of the shop landscape nishikie, portrait nishiki-e, and books are strung up for display. The scroll-shaped panel in the upper right of the illustration gives a description of the printing process. The 118 prints in the Dai Nihon Bussan Zue series illustrate the manufacturing processes of typical products around Japan and were produced in the same year as the First National Industrial Exhibition. The series was published in an orihon concertina-bound format, hence the faint vertical crease to the centre of this print.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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 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.

First (and only) edition of this rare and spectacular children’s book, inspired by the artist’s own children, printed in a very small number of copies and entirely coloured by hand in pochoir by Jean Saudé. The huge double-page illustrations, with short accompanying text tell the tale of Auguste, a naughty boy who is only reformed after his toys revolt against him.

André Devambez (1867-1943) had trained at the Beaux Arts, Paris, winning the grand prix de Rome in 1890. He was son and heir to the fashionable Devambez publishing business which had specialised in high-quality illustrated books, but struck out on his own as a painter specialising in the depiction of modern life. Several of his works are held by the Musée D’Orsay. Worldcat lists the Bibliothèque nationale and Cotsen (Princteon University) copies only.

A miniature photographic souvenir of the pavilions of the 1931 Paris Exposition Coloniale.