Very rare first edition of a set of engravings by the Antwerp printmaker Jean-Baptiste Barbé (1578-1649) after the designs of Theodoor van Loon (c.1581-1649), a Flemish painter noted as an early stylistic follower of Caravaggio (1571-1610). The work presents bust-length portraits of the Holy Family, the Four Evangelists, and the..... More

A fine and very genuine copy of the rare first edition of Pablo José de Arriaga’s meticulous account of the Indians of Peru at the turn of the 17th century. Intended as a manual to help clerics identify and eradicate native “superstitions”, the work is filled with minute details describing..... More

Rare first and only edition of this illustrated funeral book recording the ceremonies for Pope Paul V (1550-1621) held in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, with a fine suite of full-page engravings of ephemeral sculpture and architecture, including a series of 16 sculptures of Virtues by the great Gian Lorenzo..... More

Rare editions of two works important for bringing the new computational technique of Briggs and Napier to the Continent. The first work is considered the second edition of Briggs exposition of his own as well as Napier's treatment of the logarithm (first 1624): "[It] included thirty thousand logarithms, those from..... More

Rare first edition of this polemical work against the use of liquid salts and defending in their stead the controlled use of arsenic, bound with three other titles by the same author on 1)pharmacy, 2)a distilled vitriolic spirit, 3) the use of hellebore. More

[Bound with:] [CHINA] / KIRWITZER,Wenceslaus Pantaleon / DARDE, Jean / MACHAUKT, J.-B. (trans.) Histoire de ce qui s’est passé au royaume de la Chine en l’année 1624. Paris, Sebastian Cramoisy, 1629. (2) ff., 102, 1 integral blank.      [And with:] [ETHIOPIA] / MENDEZ, Alfonso / PAEZ, Gaspar / MACHAULT, J.-B..... More

Very rare first and only edition of the mathematician Pierre Vernier’s (1580-1637) landmark work introducing his invention of an ingenious new scale – here illustrated with a fold-out engraving – designed to greatly increase the accuracy of mensuration instruments. The scarcity of this treatise belies its broad impact on many..... More

Very rare first edition of a treatise by the Dutch autodidact astronomer Martin Hortensius (or van den Hove) (1605-39) refuting Johannes Kepler’s (1571-30) criticism of his measurements concerning the angular diameter of the sun. The two men first disputed this observational problem following Hortensius’ publication of his findings in the..... More

Very attractive copy of the rare first edition of the first work on logarithms printed in Italy, the first published work of a great mathematician of whom Galileo wrote, “few, if any, since Archimedes, have delved as far and as deep into the science of geometry.” Cavalieri introduced and popularized..... More

Rare first edition of the first book on Vietnam in English, an eyewitness account of the commerce, government and cultural life of Cochin-China (central Vietnam) written by the Jesuit missionary Cristoforo Borri and first published in Italian in 1631. Borri begins by marking the kingdom’s boundaries, identifying it as a...... More

The preferred large format French language 3rd edition. This is a large and absolutely genuine example of this classic illustrated travelogue to the East and West Indies, termed by Lach “the most important of the firsthand accounts published independently of the great travel collections” (I.198). No other book contained so..... More

First edition of Galileo’s most important work, the foundation of modern physics. This work was Galileo’s ‘greatest scientific achievement … Mathematicians and physicists of the later seventeenth century, Isaac Newton among them, rightly supposed that Galileo had begun a new era in the science of mechanics. It was upon his..... More