French surveying manuscript with twenty delicate watercolor and wash illustrations, presenting solutions to a range of topographic problems. The detailed diagrams note the locations of the requisite graphometers and levels, and the accompanying text includes calculations and formulae. The book includes a range of practical exercises, such as measuring the..... More

A very rare, original photograph of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, taken by Ivan (Giovanni) Bianchi (1811-1893) from the porch of the Mariinsky Theater. A native of Switzerland, Bianchi came to Russia at the age of ten and received education at the Institute of Painting and Sculpture in Moscow..... More

Very rare first edition, and likely a pre-journal ‘off-print,’ of this report on the wines presented and judged at the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873, with special focus on the wines of Spain, written by the chief of the Spanish Agricultural Commission. Santos’ work begins with a description of recent..... More

The expanded, third edition (1866-first; 1869-second) of a very rare publication on late nineteenth century German beer making on the eve of the invention of pasteurization. Thanks to technological advances, the second half of the nineteenth century saw a boom in the industrialization of beer-making, marked by the opening of..... More

The first edition (a later issue) of the memoirs of the renowned French courtesan Cora Pearl (1835-1886), published the year of her death. Before the publication, she is said to have contacted her former lovers, offering to anonymize their names in her autobiography if they paid her. Greatly successful, the..... More

Dedication copy of a rare suite of large fantastic utopian architectural designs of surprising modernity for the time by the Swiss symbolist artist, architect and poet Albert Trachsel (1863-1929), considered by Vivien Greene, in her catalog for the 2017 Guggenheim exhibition in New York City, the “Edgar Allan Poe of..... More

Extraordinary, very rare portfolio of 58 fine, original photographs of dredges taken by the noted Dutch photographer Johannes Henk Tollens (1864-1936) during the first years of the 20th century. Apparently produced to commemorate the merger which formed the A. Bos & J. P. Heijblom dredging company of Dordrecht, Holland, the..... More

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Scarce first edition of these two essays on dramatic poetry and the practical aspects of set design and theater production, of interest among 16th century Italian treatises for their monographic focus and particularly their direct link not only to a particular Italian court (Ferrara) but even to a specific production..... More

Rare first edition of the first publication on optics (perspectiva), and a crucial text that was studied by Leonardo da Vinci. Johannes de Peckham’s (England c. 1230-1292) Perspectiva communis is illustrated with 77 woodcut diagrams depicting the human eye, the nature of vision, and the eye’s role in the representation..... More

A stunning, original-color example of "one of the most decorative and popular of all the early maps of Africa" (Norwich), notable for its decorative and artistic merit as well as its relative geographic accuracy. The shape of the continent is almost perfect, and the coastal cities and rivers are named..... More