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First edition of the first of Joseph Cundall’s illuminated gift books, with superb decoration by John Brandard printed in chromolithography. ‘The borders in the book were copied from Harleian MS 2936 and MS 3469, Royal MS.19.C.3 and 19.C.8, the DeCroy MS, and Henry VIII’s Missal, all in the British Library; also used was a Book of Hours in the possession of the publisher. The miniature paintings are from Harleian MS. 2877’ (Claire McKendrick). Cundall (printer, publisher and photographer) is also known as the publisher of the first commercially printed Christmas card (in an edition of 1000 copies) in December 1843 (the same month as Dickens’s A Christmas Carol). He later produced some of the most handsome illustrated books of the 1850s and 1860s, including the ‘Home Treasury’ series of children’s books. McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.) pp. 90-1.

First edition. The frontispiece included a mounted oval collotype print reproducing an engraved portrait of John Milton McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.), p. 137.

First edition. One of the most spectacular fruits of nineteenth-century Medievalism, with its elaborate chromolithograph interpretations of illuminated manuscripts, many with gold and silver inks. The text volume additionally contains a sequence of original photographic reproductions of prints by Wierix. Issued as a series of 70 individual numbers, the pagination of the plate volumes is very erratic, with numerous additional plates outside the main sequence and with some leaves having plates on both sides, others on just one. The appendix provides an historical and bibliographical key to the plates, listing manuscripts in mainly French and Italian libraries. Curmer’s output and importance is discussed at length by Isabelle Saint-Martin, ‘Rêve médiéval et invention contemporaine; variations sur l’enluminure en France au XIXe siècle’ in Coomans and De Mayer, eds, The Revival of Medieval Illumination, 2007.