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
A full-sheet Oxford Almanack for the year 1800 with lists of the kings of England starting from William the Conqueror and of the officers of the university. It is illustrated with an etching designed by Edward Dayes (1763-1804) and executed by James Basire (1730-1802). The text was engraved by James..... More
![Depositum Illustrissimae Dominae Elizabethae Geoginae [sic] Adelaïdis Filiae Unicae … Georgii...](/pictures/thumb/6061.jpeg?v=1623873374)
Unusual royal souvenir printed on silk and commemorating the death of the infant Princess Elizabeth of Clarence (1820-1), daughter of Prince William (the future William IV) and Adelaine of Saxe-Meiningen, who at the date of her passing was ahead of the future Queen Victoria (1819-1901), her cousin, in the line..... More
Rare 17th-century separately issued engraving depicting the newly excavated and constructed Vatican grottoes beneath St. Peter’s in Rome, a print produced by Pietro Paolo Drei after designs by his father, Benedetto Drei. Both father and son served as ‘factors’ for the Reverenda Fabbrica of St. Peter’s and thus played pivotal..... More
Nine broadsides with laudatory sonnets addressed to female singers, who were featured in several opera productions in Siena (Italy) from 1700 to 1704. These materials are not only an invaluable source for the history of Italian opera, but also offer an understanding of the position of women in Italian opera..... More
Extremely rare first edition (second issue, a year after the first) of this exposition on the drawing methods of Jean-François Le Breton, a respected drawing master in 19th century Paris. The present work is of special interest, having been wholly composed and lithographed by two women, one of whom was..... More
The first edition of a rare treatise on the roofing practices in the Duchy of Savoy by Charles-Marie-Joseph Despine (1792-1856), the secretary of the Royal Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce founded in 1825. The work focuses on various roofing customs and analyzes their advantages and disadvantages, providing a rich overview..... More
First and only edition of this fascinating example of the intersection of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: a manual for manufacturing glass vessels for scientific instruments and experiments, and for its practical applications. Among the uses for these vessels (each of which Chevallier explains) are making firecrackers, felting and..... More
![Arrest de la Cour de Parlement, Qui condamne Marie Madeleine Fougereux […] à être promenée...](/pictures/thumb/4820.jpeg?v=1623256026)
Extremely rare pamphlet issued by the Parliamentary printer, P. G. Simon, summarizing the scandalous case and fitting punishment of Mme. Fougereux, convicted of having ‘tenu lieu public chez elle depuis un temps considerable’ – of having run a brothel for a considerable amount of time. Amidst the heyday of..... More
Rare augmented edition of this undated series of 17 plates representing the obelisks and ancient columns of Rome, each engraving with a descriptive caption, and most with a scale or an indication of height. This highly focused collection, most likely inspired during the papacy of Innocent X (Camillo Pamphili, reigned..... 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
A rare collection of sixteen architectural projects, complete as offered here and in their only early edition, each illustrated by several plates,by Giuseppe Valadier (1762-1839), the chief proponent of Neoclassicism in Italy. The proposals offer a comprehensive overview of Neoclassical civil and religious architecture. As Valadier writes in the introduction..... More
Rare first edition with text of this remarkably illustrated star atlas, the first to employ the woodcut to spectacular effect by showing white stars against a black background in representing the constellations. Most star atlases appearing before Semler’s work were by contrast engraved on copper, a medium not typically used..... More
Rare first edition of a Hebrew/Latin/Dutch pocket-lexicon, compiled by Johannes Leusden, a follower of the famous philologist and Christian Hebraist Johannes Buxtorf (1564-1629), who chaired Hebrew studies at Basel for over thirty years. The volume is comprised of four parts, with Leusden’s two philological works preceded by a supplement. The..... More
Very attractive early 18th-century French illustrated manuscript of practical geometry in seven books, including individual sections on longimetry, planimetry, and stereometry—the fundamentals of precision surveying and draftsmanship. The manuscript closely follows but is not identical to Jacques Ozanam’s Géométrie Pratique du sr Boulenger (Paris 1684), which itself was a revision..... More
Very rare separately published first edition of this 1665 ichnographic plan of Rome, in full contemporary handcolor, designed by the Ghent architect, draftsman, and etcher Lievin Cruyl (1634-c. 1720). Famous for his remarkably executed vedute of Rome, drawn with the aide of optical instruments to spectacular effect, and the present..... More
Rare early 19th-century French popular broadside, here in fine contemporary hand-color, depicting the legendary Juif-Errant, or ‘Wandering Jew,’ the mythical immortal man said to have been present at the Crucifixion who was cursed thereafter to walk the earth ceaselessly until the Second Coming. The broadside has at its center a...... 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
Only edition of the first map of China engraved and printed in England. With its illustrations of a Chinese man and a Chinese woman dressed in their traditional Chinese garb, it must have been a remarkable sight for an English audience highly unlikely to have set eyes on an in-the-flesh..... 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
One of the masterworks of early modern map engraving and among the earliest focused depictions of the West Indies within the context of the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, the Yucatan, Panama, and the northern coast of South America. A principal aim of the map is to show the discoveries of..... More
Fine example of this cornerstone map of Florida and the Southeast, with a bold impression and good margins. According to Baxter, this is “the most remarkable and important map, which has been preserved from sixteenth century maps, of that part of the East Coast which lies between Cape Hatteras and..... More
A fine example of one of the first regional maps of a part of what is now the United States in the second state (Burden 76, state 2). Not only was this the first map to emerge directly from England’s first attempt to colonize North America—the failed Roanoke settlement—but it was also..... 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
A brilliant example in rich original hand color of the rare (and only) English language edition of the earliest printed, folio-size western map specifically of China by Ortelius and “the first to show the Great Wall” (Nebenzahl). “This map remained the standard type for the interior of China for over..... More