Search

Criteria:
  • Keywords = art & architecture
  • Les grands effets merveilleux de l’Acupuncture. by (ACUPUNCTURE). (ACUPUNCTURE). ~ Les grands effets merveilleux de l’Acupuncture. [Paris]: Cheyère [and Mantoux], [n.d., c. 1825].
    A rare and amusing satire on the practice of acupunture ― much in vogue among certain Parisian doctors in the early nineteenth century. A sickly… (more)

    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.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £1,200.00
  • [An Album of 50 Watercolours depicting Women’s Fashion. by (FASHION). (FASHION). ~ [An Album of 50 Watercolours depicting Women’s Fashion. Paris, 1867-8].
    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… (more)

    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.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £8,500.00
  • Grand Equestrian Feat, called the Peasant Frolic. As performed at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Price 4d 1/2 Plain. by (CIRCUS). (TOY THEATRE). (CIRCUS). (TOY THEATRE). ~ Grand Equestrian Feat, called the Peasant Frolic. As performed at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Price 4d 1/2 Plain. [London]: W[illiam]. West at his Theatrical Warehouse, Exeter Street, Strand, Apr[i]l 14, 1821.
    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… (more)

    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.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £2,000.00
  • Description des objets d’arts qui composent le cabinet de feu M. le Baron V. Denon. [1] Monuments antiques, historiques, modernes; ouvrages oreintaux, etc... [2] by (DENON, Dominique Vivant). (DENON, Dominique Vivant). ~ Description des objets d’arts qui composent le cabinet de feu M. le Baron V. Denon. [1] Monuments antiques, historiques, modernes; ouvrages oreintaux, etc... [2] Paris: Hippolyte Tilliard [sold by Tilliard frères and Treuttel et Wurtz in Paris and Treuttel et Wurtz in London], 1826.
    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… (more)

    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).

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £1,600.00
  • ‘adapted to spike cranes in a war of the future with pigmies’
    Nashional Taste!!! Dedicated without Permission, to the Church Commissioners... by [CRUIKSHANK, George]. [CRUIKSHANK, George]. ~ Nashional Taste!!! Dedicated without Permission, to the Church Commissioners... London: G. Humphrey, April 7 1824.
    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… (more)

    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.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £1,500.00
  • Les Osages. by DELPECH, François Séraphin [after a drawing by] Louis-Léopold BOILLY. DELPECH, François Séraphin [after a drawing by] Louis-Léopold BOILLY. ~ Les Osages. Paris: Aubert, 1827
    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… (more)

    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.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £1,250.00
  • Exposition Publique des Produits de l’Industrie Française; Catalogue des Produits IndustrielsQui ont été exposés au Champ-de-Mars pendant les trois derniers jours complémentaires de l’an VI; avec les noms, départemens et demeures des artistes et manufacturiers qui ont concouru à l’exposition; suivi du Procès-Verbal du Jury nommé par l’examen de ces produits. by (EXHIBITION CATALOGUE). (EXHIBITION CATALOGUE). ~ Exposition Publique des Produits de l’Industrie Française; Catalogue des Produits Industriels
    Qui ont été exposés au Champ-de-Mars pendant les trois derniers jours complémentaires de l’an VI; avec les noms, départemens et demeures des artistes et manufacturiers qui ont concouru à l’exposition; suivi du Procès-Verbal du Jury nommé par l’examen de ces produits.
    Paris: Imprimerie de la République; Vendémiaire an VI [October 1798].
    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… (more)

    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.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £4,000.00
  • [Embroidered sampler]. by PREEST, Emma. PREEST, Emma. ~ [Embroidered sampler]. [Gloucestershire, July 20 1847.
    ‘Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit / Death how certain Death how sur[e] / Sin the wound. And Christ the cure’. ‘Emma. Preest. Her… (more)

    ‘Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit / Death how certain Death how sur[e] / Sin the wound. And Christ the cure’. ‘Emma. Preest. Her work / Tuts Hill House / July. 20. 1847 Aged /12. Years. Old’.

    Emma Preest is possibly the Emma born on the 8th June 1835 at Bream Eaves, Gloucestershire and baptised in the Wesleyan chapel at Monmouth — certainly that would accord with her given age (12) in 1847 when she made this sampler. The identity of Tuts Hill house is not straightforward, there having been two houses so named in the vicinity of Tidenham, Chepstow. We can find no pictorial evidence of either of them as a three-storey, four bay house as in Emma’s depiction, and no Preest family associated with either. But if one accepts the likelihood of Emma being Gloucestershire born, both houses would have been some ten miles from her birthplace, suggesting the possibility she entered service at one of them at the age of 12 (quite possible) and that this may have been an ‘apprentice’ piece. Young girls were taught this kind of sewing not so much as a primer in reading (still less writing) as in household needlework and linen labelling.

    The verse is a variation of a popular gravestone epitaph: ‘Life is uncertain, death is sure, Sin the wound, and Christ the cure. If we have correctly identified Emma Preest, she married in 1854, had several children and emigrated with her family after 1870 and died in 1915 at Shawnee, Perry County, Ohio, USA, aged 80.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £450.00
  • Monsieur Bille dans le tourmente. by VILLETARD, Pierre. Pierre Falké, illustrator. VILLETARD, Pierre. Pierre Falké, illustrator. ~ Monsieur Bille dans le tourmente. Paris: Fayard, Le Livre de Demain, [ 1925].
    Number 2 of 15 copies. (more)

    Number 2 of 15 copies.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £150.00
  • Une Honnête Femme. by BOURDEAUX, Henry. Paul BAUDIER, illustrator. BOURDEAUX, Henry. Paul BAUDIER, illustrator. ~ Une Honnête Femme. Paris: Fayard, Le Livre de Demain, [ 1925].
    Number 2 of 15 copies with the additional suite on chine. (more)

    Number 2 of 15 copies with the additional suite on chine.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £150.00
  • L’Inconstante. by HOUVILLE, Gérard d’. Gérard COCHET, illustrator. HOUVILLE, Gérard d’. Gérard COCHET, illustrator. ~ L’Inconstante. Paris: Fayard, Le Livre de Demain, [ 1925].
    Number 2 of 11 copies. (more)

    Number 2 of 11 copies.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £150.00
  • [The State of the Poor, in French]. Extrait d’un ouvrage ayant pour titre: État des pauvres, ou Histoire des classes travaillantes de la société en Angleterre, depuis la conquête jusqu’à l’époque actuelle... publié par order du Ministre de l’Intérieur. [in Recueil de Mémoires sur les établissemens d’humanité]. by EDEN, Frederick Morton, [second Baronet of Maryland]. EDEN, Frederick Morton, [second Baronet of Maryland]. ~ [The State of the Poor, in French]. Extrait d’un ouvrage ayant pour titre: État des pauvres, ou Histoire des classes travaillantes de la société en Angleterre, depuis la conquête jusqu’à l’époque actuelle... publié par order du Ministre de l’Intérieur. [in Recueil de Mémoires sur les établissemens d’humanité]. Paris: Henry Agasse, An 7 de a République, [ 1798-9].
    First edition in French of any part of Eden’s The State of the Poor. Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England (1797) one… (more)

    First edition in French of any part of Eden’s The State of the Poor. Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England (1797) one of the classic works in the history of economics and the foundation of the discipline of sociology. This extensive but partial translation formed numbers 21 and 24 of the rare Recueil de Mémoires sur les établissemens d’humanité, continuously paginated across the two volumes. The editors’ preface notes the timeliness of such a translation at a time of revolutionary upheaval when no system of social security for the poor existed in France. Issued anonymously the translation is attributed to A.-C. Duquesnoy by Rochedieu. It precedes the edition translated by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt of 1800 and is very rare. Rochedieu, Bibliography of Translations of English Works 1700-1800, 95. Cf. Printing and the Mind of Man, 249 (the English edition). Besides the British library copy (incomplete, apparently the first volume only), Worldcat locates no other copies outside continental Europe.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £3,000.00
  • [Embroidered sampler. by FULTON, Anna. FULTON, Anna. ~ [Embroidered sampler. British Isles. [ 1827].
    Alphabet (upper and lower case), several decorative lines and two verses: ‘Is there ambition in my heart / search gracious God and see...’ [Isaac Watts]… (more)

    Alphabet (upper and lower case), several decorative lines and two verses: ‘Is there ambition in my heart / search gracious God and see...’ [Isaac Watts] and ‘Teach me to live / that I may dread/ the grave as little / as my bed // Teach me to die ‘ that so I may / with joy behold /the judgement day’ [by Thomas Ken, later reused by Thomas Hardy in Jude the Obscure]. Needlework samplers remain one of the most widespread manifestations of the teaching and learning of basic literacy among girls and young women and, as here, reflect a strongly moralistic background.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £300.00
  • Procession]. by [GREENAWAY, Kate. [GREENAWAY, Kate. ~ Procession]. [London:] Marcus Ward & Co, [ 1881].
    Greenaway’s ‘Procession’ greetings card set consisted of just two cards, but each was produced with variant verses.

    This set includes all four variants of each.

    Card 1… (more)

    Greenaway’s ‘Procession’ greetings card set consisted of just two cards, but each was produced with variant verses.

    This set includes all four variants of each.

    Card 1 (Blue border):
    (a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
    (b) ‘My Valentine in every rose discern...’
    (c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
    (d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’

    Card 2 (Pink border):
    (a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
    (b) ‘Let’s love and live together, dear...’
    (c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
    (d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’ Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 284.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £260.00
  • Party Girl]. by [GREENAWAY, Kate. [GREENAWAY, Kate. ~ Party Girl]. [London: Marcus Ward & Co, 1880s].
    The three greetings cards comprising the larger version of Greenaway’s Party Girl set, each present here in several variants, listed below according to Schuster &… (more)

    The three greetings cards comprising the larger version of Greenaway’s Party Girl set, each present here in several variants, listed below according to Schuster & Engen 282.

    Card 1 Girl with Badminton set
    a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
    b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
    c) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place!’.
    d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘To bear my love to you to-day’.
    e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.

    Card 2 Girl in rust coat and beaver hat
    b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
    d) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
    d variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
    e) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘From one who loves you dearly’.
    g) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
    h) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.

    Card 3 Girl in green dress
    a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
    b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
    c variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
    d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘I bring you some flowers from your Valentine’.
    e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
    f) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 282.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £350.00
  • The Story of Little Red Riding Hood’s Christmas]. by [GREENAWAY, Kate [GREENAWAY, Kate ~ The Story of Little Red Riding Hood’s Christmas]. [London:] Marcus Ward & Co, [before 1868].
    One of two versions of this early set, this one apparently issued as Christmas cards. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 291. (more)

    One of two versions of this early set, this one apparently issued as Christmas cards. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 291.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £260.00
  • Historical Sketch of the Parish of Davington in the County of Kent and of the Priory there dedicated to S. Mary Magdalene. With appendices and plates. by WILLEMENT, Thomas. WILLEMENT, Thomas. ~ Historical Sketch of the Parish of Davington in the County of Kent and of the Priory there dedicated to S. Mary Magdalene. With appendices and plates. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1862.
    First edition, one of 250 copies (of a total edition of 280). Thomas Willement was one of the pioneers of the nineteenth-century gothic revival. He… (more)

    First edition, one of 250 copies (of a total edition of 280). Thomas Willement was one of the pioneers of the nineteenth-century gothic revival. He worked alongside his better-known contemporary Pugin on several projects, but never very happily: Pugin later (unfairly) accused Willement of being only interested in money. Willement is perhaps best known for his stained glass in the medieval style (St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Hampton Court, Barbados cathedral). Davington priory (acquired by him in 1845) was an exercise in the complete medieval revival of a much altered priory house and church, involving polychromatic painted decoration, stained glass, and designs for encaustic tiles, together with purchases of furniture and fittings. Much of the work described in the Historical Sketch remains intact. 250 copies of this descriptive publication were printed on ‘foolscap quarto’ paper, with a further 30 copies on tinted ‘crown quarto’.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £250.00
  • ‘Maruyama-ha Fūga-chō’ [later cover title]. by (EROTICA --- SHUNGA). (EROTICA --- SHUNGA). ~ ‘Maruyama-ha Fūga-chō’ [later cover title]. Japan, late Edo period, c. 1780-1820.
    Twelve superb paintings on silk (six pairs), each a couple making love, with one image showing faces, the other, their genitals, in each case provocatively… (more)

    Twelve superb paintings on silk (six pairs), each a couple making love, with one image showing faces, the other, their genitals, in each case provocatively and playfully framed to present a detail only. The paintings of each pair are linked by subtle details of clothing, sometimes suggested through a small glimpse of a pattern or a colour found in its counterpart. They are probably cuttings rescued from a refined and elegant hand scroll or hanging scroll of a larger size, wittily preserved in pairs. These are rare survivals of very high status shunga painting of the decades around 1800. The later title label on the album cover attributes them to the so-called ‘Maruyama School’ of Kyoto, but they have more in common with the sophisticated erotic silk paintings of high status artists such as Chôbunsai Eishi working around 1800. Several such paintings, on scrolls, are reproduced in the British Museum exhibition catalogue Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (2013), see illustrations 56 and 57.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £2,800.00
  • Voyage autour de sa chambre... Illustrations de Henri Caruchet, gravées à l’eau-forte par Frédéric Massé... by UZANNE, Octave. Henri, CARUCHET, illustrator. UZANNE, Octave. Henri, CARUCHET, illustrator. ~ Voyage autour de sa chambre... Illustrations de Henri Caruchet, gravées à l’eau-forte par Frédéric Massé... Paris: H. Floury, pour les Bibliophiles indépéndants, ‘1896’ [but wrapper dated 1897 as called for].
    First edition thus, subscriber’s copy, number 77 of 210 copies, complete with a suite of cancelled plates in monochrome. With its title a nod to… (more)

    First edition thus, subscriber’s copy, number 77 of 210 copies, complete with a suite of cancelled plates in monochrome. With its title a nod to Le Maistre’s famous confinement narrative, Voyage autour de ma chambre (1794, Uzanne’s Voyage autour de sa chambre is ‘Une ancienne chanson d’amour voltige dans la solitude; dans ce nid charmant où l’on était si bien à deux, il ne reste que des rêves de volupté indécise et la sarabande enlaçante, mystérieuse et sinistre des souvenirs, ces revenants de l’âme qu'on évoque, qu’on chasse et qu’on appelle encore’.
    A delicious bibliophilic production and one of Octave Uzanne’s rarest books: the limitation noting: ‘Après tirage les cuivres ont été lacérés.’ The additional suite consists of the cancelled plates, in which central portions left blank for the overprinting of the text from other plates have been filled in with etched croquis, often humorous, of: fashionable women, a devil, a bat, a rat and so on. The two sets of original wrappers are preserved, one with the design by Henry Thiriet. Uzanne’s productions are the zenith of a certain strand of 1890s Parisian bibliophilia: with precision and exactitude of the latest printing techniques harnessed to produce a series of works of rare beauty. Caruchet’s illuminated borders are perfect examples of art nouveau’s decadent themes, though lightened throughout with delicate and elegant botanical forms.
    Uzannes’s text had first appeared in his Calendrier de Vénus (1880, pp. 127-150). Not in Carteret. Uzanne is extensively discussed in Silverman’s excellent The New Bibliopolis: French Book Collectors and the Culture of Print, 1880-1914 (Studies in Book and Print Culture, 2013).

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £3,000.00
  • (BOULLE, André-Charles). ASSELINEAU, Charles. ~ André Boulle ébéniste de Louis XIV... troisième édition entièrement revue et complétée par de nouveaux documents. Paris: [Gauthier-Villars for] P. Rouquette, 1872.
    One of 70 copies on papier vergé, with the author’s initials (total edition 76). An enlarged edition of Asselineau’s biographical account of France’s most celebrated… (more)

    One of 70 copies on papier vergé, with the author’s initials (total edition 76). An enlarged edition of Asselineau’s biographical account of France’s most celebrated cabinet maker, pioneer of the distinctive inlaid marquetry technique which carries his name. The book first appeared in 1854 (13 pages) and was reissued in 1855 (16 pages), with important biographical documents added to this 1872 edition (44 pages).

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £350.00