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First edition, presentation copy. Among the plates of decorative woodwork, broadly in medieval revivalist style is an illustration for a carved wooded book cover, lettered ‘Album’.

First edition. ‘Illuminated by W. & G. Audsley, architects, Liverpool... Illustrated by Charles Rolt. Chromolithographed by W.R. Tymms.’ William and George Audsley were to become highly influential in the Victorian gothic revival, designing significant buildings both in Britain and the United States. They created a number of lavishly illustrated books on ornament and Japanese art, notably The Keramic Art of Japan of 1875. ‘The size of this book alone is enough to make it one of the outstanding monuments to the Victorian passion for illumination’ (McLean). McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.), p. 133.

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.

Second edition (the first 1851). Describing the first edition McLean wrote: ’The single colour plate in Sentiments and Similes is in fact very fine, and is superior in technical quality to the chromolithography of Noel Humphreys’ early books’. McLean, Victorian Bookbindings in Paper, p. 56; McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.) p. 110-1.

First edition of this monument of Victorian book design, combining Jones’s exhuberant medievalism with an excellent example of the original relievo binding. Originally published in parts, 1861-1862, the binding an enormous example of deeply embossed leather executed in Leake’s patent ‘relievo’ process (1846-1850s). McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.), p. 129.

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.

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.