Search

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.

First edition of the first geometry manual published in French ― considered the earliest scientific manual in French. Bovelles stood at the beginning of a new French tradition of teaching science and mathematics in the vernacular, and his aim (stated in his interesting preface) was to provide a text not for the speculative Latinist, but for the ‘common workman’. This was more than simply an author’s trope, since his text is indeed practical throughout, regularly referring to the material and physical conditions of the figures in question, not simply their theoretical forms, ‘implying that this geometry belongs to craftsmen, not scholars’. ‘[Bovelles] published the Géometrie François in 1511, the same year that the first illustrated edition of Vitruvius’s ten books on architecture was published in Venice. Unlike Vitruvius, however, Bovelles claimed to have written his book not for elite, Latinate readers, but for those he called ‘common’ [plebes] workmen. Today, this book exists only in few copies, and it was not reprinted.’ (Ooosterhoff, ‘Early French Readerships of technical Print’ in Translating Early Modern Science, eds. Fransen, Hodson, and Enenkel (2017), p. 209). The book proved popular and enduring with new editions of 1542, 1547 (enlarged), 1551, 1555 (two), 1557, 1566 and 1608.
Born in Picardy around 1471, De Bovelles studied at Paris with the humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples though evidently left the city during the plague of 1495 without taking a degree. He subsequently worked on numerous mathematical problems, notably squaring the circle by mechanical means, of which he gave an account in the Latin Geometricae introductionis published in 1503. This book was followed by Liber de XII numeris in 1510, considering perfect numbers, and by the present Géometrie of 1511. Besides mathematics De Bovelles is important for his 1509 De Sapiente in which he suggested that human perception did not necessarily mirror reality but also created it ― a work which was to have a tangible influence on Descartes. Very rare. With no UK or US copies and no copy in the Bibliothèque nationale we can locate only two copies in French libraries (Blois and Rouen) and a copy at Ghent. Inventaire chronologique des éditions parisiennes du XVIe siècle, II, Paris, 1977, no 29; Bechtel, Gothiques français, p. 311; Renouard, ICP, II, 29; not in Renouard, Annales de l’imprimerie des Estienne, Paris, 1843. R. Taton, ‘Bovelles et les premiers traités de géométrie en langue française’, Charles de Bovelles. Colloque de Noyon, 1979, Paris, 1982, p. 183-196.

First editions of the complete sale catalogues of Denon’s celebrated collections, a marked-up set from the collection of Frédéric Villot (1809-1875), Louvre conservateur of pictures and an important collector in his own right.
Besides his erotic novella, Point de Lendemain, Denon (diplomat, artist and director of the Musée Napoleon at the Louvre) is primarily remembered for his role in Napoleon’s expeditions of 1798-9 and as author of Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte (1802). Among the most influential and important French collectors, he acquired obsessively but with discrimination, both for Napoleon and himself. His posthumous sales of 1826-7 included over 3000 lots of antiquities, pictures and prints, with eight important Egyptian papyri included in the first sale and his own drawings from the Egypt exhibition in another. The three volumes are very scarce complete and comprise: I. Monuments antiques, historiques, modernes; ouvrages orientale, etc. (ed. L.J.J. Dubois, 1390 lots); II. Tableaux dessins et miniatures (ed. A.N. Perignon, 977 lots); III. Estampes et ouvrages a figures (ed. Duchesne Aîné, 801 lots).

Architect John Nash is impaled on the spire of his new All Souls church in Langham Place, Marylebone, completed in 1823 as part of his grand plans for the costly ‘improved’ swathe of London stretching from the lower end of Regent’s Street to Regent’s Park. With its rotunda and idiosyncratic steeple thhe landmark church was not universally admired. This plate is subtitled: ‘Dedicated without Permission, to the Church Commissioners. Providence sends Meat, The Devil sends Cooks, Parliament sends Funds, But, who sends the Architects?!!!’
Dorothy George describes it thus: ‘An illustration of the debate of 30 Mar. when H. G. Bennett demanded the name of the architect of the church being built in Langham Place. ‘He should also like to hear what this mass of deformity had cost’, and professed himself ready to subscribe towards the cost of demolition. Under pressure, Arbuthnot admitted that the architect was Nash.... [who] is reputed to have commented to his assistants on this print: ‘See, gentlemen, how criticism has exalted me.’ The Times, 10 April, derided the spire as adapted to spike cranes in a war of the future with pigmies, envisaged by the architect’. BM Satires X, 1952.

First (and presumably only) edition of a rare and delightful large format illustrated children’s book depicting boys and girls enjoying country life, including gardening and open air reading. The text is quadrilingual: German, French, Italian and Czech. This exceptionally well preserved copy bears a contemporary prize label, recording it as a prize to one Anna Kalser at the Pilsner Kreishhaupt-Schule (Bohemia). Very rare: no copy found in Worldcat. KVK records a single copy (Austrian National Library) of a variant issue (also undated) in 8vo format (paginated pp. 33, not 15 as in our oblong 4to, with the plates folded uncoloured).

Sole edition, very rare, and a remarkable survival, of this pioneering and original children’s panorama. The eight joined plates present a single sequential narrative — cleverly seen from different vantage points — of a morning ride across several miles of rolling English countryside some thirty miles from London (as the milestone in the first image indicates). The two young riders (Edward and Walter) leave their large county house, pass through lanes with green fields on either side, an imaginary village with church, inn and shops, passing windmills, a watermill, bridges and (in the last 2 images) the newly-built railway with steam-trains. A good-natured and simple story, the panorama and accompanying text presents a telling microcosm of genteel English Victorian society, the participants all acting in their proper place in an ordered society. The gamekeeper’s daughter opens a gate for the boys, a family acquaintance of rank rides by in her carriage, a wagonner supplying the village shops is given a tip for ale, the father rides to hounds, while a ‘loutish’ farm boy mentioned in the text is silently omitted in the panorama. The text, printed in regular letterpress was evidently intended to be read by an adult to a child.
The use and presentation of the panorama for narrative is striking, quite unlike most contemporary British panoramas or children’s books of this date or earlier. The title page indicates that it was to form part of a series: ‘Stories told in Pictures’ of which the advert leaf mentions two further titles ‘nearly ready’: A Noon-Day Ramble and An Evening Walk. Neither appears to have survived, or perhaps were never published. A Morning Ride is exceptionally rare, with only the Opie Collection (Bodleian Library) and Rhode Island School of Design copies located. Opie EE 190. Described in detail in Hannah Field in an essay in the 2015 collection Space and Place in Children’s Literature, 1789 to the Present entitled ‘The Story unfolds: intertwined Space and Time in the Victorian Children’s Panorama’

Sole edition of this rare suite of ten hand-coloured lithographs commemorating a ball inspired by Ivanhoe, held in Brussels on 5 February 1823 by the Prince and Princess of Orange in honour of the British community in that city. The ball was an early expression of ‘Scottomania’, and of the revival of interest in medieval pageantry, that occupied European high society following the publication of Ivanhoe in 1819. There were thirty-two guests at the ball, all attending in elaborate costume and dancing a special quadrille which became the talk of the town and remained ‘the principal topic of conversation at Brussels’ several months later (according to the The Repository of Arts, May 1823). The additional printed programme (not necessarily issued with the plates) tells us that Lord Danlo was Ivanhoe, while the Black Knight was played by Mr de Janti, and Mrs Berkley taking the role of Rowena. Further down the list is Mrs Fielden (sic), as Alicia, wife of the Joseph Ffeilden who owned this copy – she can be seen on the left in Plate VII. Jowers, Theatrical Costume 3126. COPAC shows copies at NLS, Edinburgh, and V&A. Worldcat adds Paris-INHA only.

In 1827 members of the Osages Tribe from the Ohio River Valley in Arkansas and Missouri, travelled to Paris with Louisiana resident David DeLaunay. They were initially lionised by Paris society before being abandoned by their host and forced to fend for themselves. This celebrated lithograph shows Kihegashugah or Little Chief (age 28), Minckchatahooh or Little Soldier (age 22), and Grétomih (age 18 and cousin to Kihegashugah’s wife). It was issued as part of Delpech and Boilly’s Grimaces series (with three plates depicting the Osages) but was also issued separately, as here, without the captions found in the Grimaces version.

A rare French jigsaw set in three parts — a wonderful and complete alphabet illustrated with trades and crafts (male and female) including the: an armourer, laundrywoman, gilder, epicier, florist, glovemaker, herbalist, printer, gardener, ‘kiosque’ vendor, milkwoman, blacksmith, fancy goods seller (’nouveautés’), goldsmith, pavier, ironmonger, restaurateur, sculptor, dyer, factoryworker, tailor, wood engraver (’xylographes’ —a good solution for the letter ‘X’) and zincworker.

The very rare catalogue for the first exhibition of industrial products, held in Paris in 1798, the forerunner of the great universal exhibitions of the following centuries.
Organised by the Minister of the Interior, François de Neufchâteau, with a view to ‘offering a panorama of products from the different branches of industry in order to encourage emulation’ this was the first great exhibition held in France. Its origins went back to the previous year and the initiative of the Marquis d’Aveze, who visited the factories of Sèvres, Gobelins and Savonnerie and was appalled both at the starving condition of the workers and at the superabundance of exquisite luxury goods with insufficient commercial outlet. With Neufchâteau, he arranged for an exhibition to be held at the Chateau de St Cloud but on the very day selected for the opening (18th Fructidor 1797) the Directory sent out its decree for the expulsion of the nobility — the Chateau de St Cloud was occupied by a company of dragoons and the Marquis expelled. The exhibition eventually took place the following year at the Chateau d’Orsay and on the Champ-de-Mars (on the spot where the spoils of the Italian campaign had been exhibited six weeks previously) and in a series of sixty arcades designed by David in fashionable Grecian style. Sixteen departments and 110 exhibitors were represented and as a note at the beginning of the catalogue explains, the number would have been even greater but for the speed with which the exhibition was organised, which made it impossible to get word to more distant departments of the country in time. It was a great success and the decision was taken to hold it annually.
The pamphlet sets out the list of exhibitors and is followed by the statement of the Jury given on the 5th Vendemiare, a list of the twelve firms singled out for particular distinction by the jury, and a further list of another twelve firms meriting an ‘honourable mention’. The jury consisted of Vien, Gallois, Darcet, Chaptal, Mollard, Moitte, Gilet-Laumont, Duquesnoy, Ferd and Berthoud. It sets out its criteria clearly: the key merit of any work is the invention and its principle appeal in public terms is its utility. In the context of ongoing hostility with Britain, it is interesting to see that the jury confesses a preference for those products which rival or outshine their British counterparts. A couple of firms which did not choose to exhibit are nonetheless singled out for mention in the address: Boyer Fonfrede, a textile merchant, Didot jeune, the publisher, and Delaître, a cotton weaver. The prize winners included firms of international repute, such as Breguet, the clock maker, Lenoir, inventor and maker of mathematical instruments, and Conté, an engineer who first applied machine-ruling to engraving. Having made known its decision to hold the exhibition on an annual basis in future, the address concludes with resounding praise for the new face of France, delivered by the Revolution from subservience to its neighbours and slavery to ‘routine’, the enemy of all true art. Rare: no printed copy listed in the holdings of the Bibliothèque nationale (which has a manuscript transcription) and only 3 copies known in libraries in France. Worldcat lists copies at Yale, Northwestern, Oregon and the British Library. Sandoz and Guiffrey, Arts appliqués et industries d’art aux expositions, 1912, pp. 1-5; Douyere-Demeulenaere, Expositions publiques des produits de l’industrie francaise, Répertoire méthodique, 2008.