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A RARE PHOTOGRAPHIC PANORAMA OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Taken from the Serasker or Beyazit Tower beside the Ottoman Ministry of War, the 360-degree panorama first looks north-west to the Süleymaniye mosque an across the Golden Horn, and sweeps clockwise) eastwards, taking in Galata, the Grand Bazaar, the Seraglio, Scutari in the distance on the Asian shore, Hagia Sophia, Sultan Ahmet (Blue) and Beyazit mosques, before returning to the square of Ministry of War and an alternate view of Süleymaniye. Though not signed it is similar to the panoramas issues by Sebah and Joallier in the 1870s and 1880s. Constantiople panoramas are more commonly taken from the Galata tower on the northern shore of the Golden Horn, where as this one looks from the southern shore.

First edition of a rare lithographed work, pseudonymously issued, but the artist/author James O’Hara is identified in this copy with a contemporary manuscript key. The album is in the form of a graphic narrative recording a yachting cruise from Ireland to Iceland by a group of friends aboard Captain Henry’s Maroquita (a fine two-masted schooner wrecked in Holyhead harbour in 1860). While the initial scenes depict the voyage out (with predictible sea-sickness) most of the images are Icelandic vignettes, with local characters and landmarks. One shows a member of the party photographing geysers with a tripod camera — surely an early record of photography in Iceland.

The manuscript key identifies the four sailors, ‘Smith, Jones, Robinson and Brown’ as James O’Hara, Captain Sandes, Mr. Lane Fox and Captain Henry, ‘proprietor of the yacht Maroquita’ respectively. The National Library of Ireland copy bears the imprint ‘Wm. Robertson’. WorldCat locates only the copy in the Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Cologne, which has the imprint of Robertson of Sackville Street, Dublin at the foot of the title-page (where ours is blank). There is also a copy in the National Library Ireland (also with Robertson imprint). No copy found in the National Library of Iceland Catalogue.

An aquatint produced by physionotrace, ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times. One description mentions that a sitting could take as little as six minutes and within four days a dozen impressions could be delivered, hand-colored if desired, with the copper plate, for fifteen francs …

‘Physionotrace was very popular in France, where it had a detrimental effect on miniature painting and engraving. At the Salon of 1793, one hundred physionotrace portraits where exhibited. Three years later that number increased to six hundred. The physionotrace portrait replaced the miniature and was used as frontispiece illustrations in a number of books, but it was not until the advent of photography that the portrait was truly democratized’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes). Thomas Jefferson had his portrait done in Paris by physionotrace in 1789 (now lost, though a print was made in 1801: see Alfred L. Bush, The Life Portraits of Thomas Jefferson, p. 9).

Chrétien was a cellist in the chambre du roi at Versailles and worked initially with the miniaturist Edme Quenedey des Riceys to produce his portraits. They separated in 1789, and Chrétien went into partnership with the engraver Jean Fouquet (d.1799), responsible for the etching here. The subject is Edme Mentelle (1730–1815), geographer, who was elected to the Institut de France in 1795.

First edition of a pioneering work in the field of forensic medicine, the graphic images depict numerous conditions resulting from homicidal and suicidal injuries. The grisly and powerful photographs show skull and bone fractures, the impact of gunshot wounds, burns, injuries caused by stabbings, the effects of hanging and so on. Each set of 50 plates is accompanied by a booklet providing details of each image and the important features from the legal-medico cases from which the photographs have been obtained. Heidtmann, Bibliographie der Photographie: Deutschsprachige Publikationen, 14062. OCLC locates 4 US copies and no UK copies.

Compiled in the town of Popovo in the wine-growing region of North Eastern Bulgaria, this souvenir album was compiled by a federation of three local temperance societies and given to one ‘Monsieur Dr. P. Legrain’. Most of the photographic postcards depict society outings, with large groups of men, women and children usually in outdoor settings in all seasons (including what appear to be very harsh winters). Several of the photographs were taken at harvest time, with copious bunches of grapes in evidence. The context of the presentation is not immediately obvious, though may be apparent in the three long inscriptions in Bulgarian accompanied by the purple inkstamps of each of the societies.