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A DELIGHTFUL BOOK-FORM BOX, complete with gilt spine bands, gilt borders to the sides, four gilt bosses (one on the upper cover apparently missing) and gilt edges. The lid incorporates a mirror and the base a hand coloured print.

A charming book-form trinket box, of unknown manufacture, but with other examples known to have been marketed in London in the late nineteenth-century. The monogram reads ‘M.S.’ (though admittedly it could also be ‘S.M.’) and it has been plausibly suggested that the reference is to Mary Queen of Scots, given the all-over thistle pattern. Mary was executed in 1587 and so it is just possible that these boxes were in some way marketed at the time of the three-hundredth anniversary, though we can do no more than offer this as a suggestion.

At the time of publication these were ‘the smallest books in the world’. An edition was first published at Mainz in 1952 to raise money for the reconstruction of the Gutenberg museum, while the firm of Waldmann & Pfitzner in Munique continued to print these novelty volumes into the 1960s. Bromer and Edison, p.117.

An almanac for the year 1820. Engraved throughout with text and images. A delightful miniature almanac, which is preceded by several popular songs (‘Aux Dames’, ‘le Portraits’, ‘le Banquet’, ‘la Barque à Caron’ etc.) Though without imprint, this is characteristic of the popular miniature books produced by Marcilly. Not in Worldcat (which locates only an 1821 issue, described as in ‘128mo’). It is probable that it was issued in these two years only. Grand-Carteret 1908 (citing a copy in the collection of Georges Salomons).