![The Felix Meritis Society: The Physics Hall]. ELECTRICITY, Reinier VINKELES](/pictures/thumb/6098.jpg?v=1642706358)
This fascinating print depicts a demonstration of static electricity to the Society Felix Meritis (Amsterdam) on a twin-plate machine, built especially for the Society by the renowned instrument maker John Cuthbertson. The double plate was Cuthbertson’s modification of an earlier design with a globe and cylinder generators. The machines built..... More
A stipple engraving and a related print in outline technique by Alexandre Clément (c. 1775 - c. 1808), after Réunion d'artistes dans l'atelier d'Isabey ("A Reunion of Artists in Isabey’s Studio"), a painting by Louis Léopold Boilly (1761-1845), which enjoyed great popularity at the time. Shown for the first time..... More
The first publication in the present volume, the anonymous Response d'un gentil-homme françois (1587), is an exceedingly rare work (one U.S. copy: Folger) from the time of the Religious Wars in France, meant as a response to l'Advertissement des Catholicques Anglois, book by Loys Dorléans (1542-1629), a zealous Catholic, avocat..... More
An unpublished manuscript, detailing regulations of the order of nuns of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph in La Flèche (France) by Mother Anne Chauvelier (1751-1823), the first Mother Superior of the order upon the community's reinstatement following the French Revolution. The Religious congregation of the nuns of Hospitallers of..... More
![TWO PRINTS]. AUCAS](/pictures/thumb/6095.jpg?v=1642699273)
Two satirical auca broadsides, each with 24 images of dwarfs, illustrating Catalan trades and archetypes, from the Valencia-based printing shop of Ildefonso Mompié (ca. 1785-1855). Both prints feature characters that would have been instantaneously recognizable to their audiences. The first print, depicting female archetypes and professions, includes illustrations of a...... More
A very rare separately published illustrated broadside on the disease of podagra or gout, a form of arthritis, by Gottfried Rogg (1669-1742), a draughtsman, engraver, and publisher in Augsburg. The central image depicts a well-dressed nobleman with legs wrapped in special gout stockings in front of a table covered with..... More
The first edition of this plague treatise by Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541), the “Luther of Medicine” and one of the key figures in the history of medicine. Written originally in Nördlingen in 1529-1530, it remained unpublished during Paracelsus’ lifetime and subsequently taken up and edited for publication by..... More
![Reflexions sur les vaisseaux de cuivre (1) [and] Nouvelles fontaines filtrantes approuvées par...](/pictures/thumb/5865.jpg?v=1642861190)
The first and only editions of two books on water filters by the French entrepreneur Joseph Amy (1696-1760), the first person in the world to be issued a water patent and to produce manufactured filters. From 1747 and until his death in 1760, Amy wrote several books on water filters..... More
A rare series of three consecutively printed dissertations (2 of them illustrated) on the flora of Brazil, diligently recorded in standard Linnaean form by Carl Thunberg, Linnaeus’ foremost disciple and the greatest botanical explorer and collector of his day. The specimens were collected by Georg Wilhelm Freyreiss in his travels..... More
Rare first edition of the earliest monograph devoted to a specific work of art (Schlosser, p. 391), an enthusiastic appraisal of Donatello’s statue of St. George commissioned for Orsan Michele and now in the Bargello: “The treatise on Donatello’s sculpture is an important document on the theory of art in..... More
Fine copy of the first and only edition of this extremely rare imprint by Juan Ruyz (or Ruiz), one of Mexico City's leading printers of the first half of the 17th century. The book describes the in-absentia funeral procession for Queen Isabel de Burbon, the wife of Philip IV of..... More
Rare first edition of an illustrated festival book describing the celebration in Valencia of the 300th anniversary of the canonization of St. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), the Dominican friar and native of Valencia acclaimed for his missionary work, his application of logic to theology, and his efforts to end the Western..... More
A very attractive example in full, original, wash coloring of one of the first surveys of the province of Bengal. The surveys were performed by James Rennell, appointed Surveyor General by the East India Company in 1767 and known as “The Father of Indian Geography.” His greatest work is considered..... More
A beautiful, large-scale, combined map and nautical chart of the Windward island, still under French control today. It was one of the many Caribbean sugar-producing islands, as evidenced by the several windmills on this map. It also shows military installations, towns, estates, roads, churches and parish houses and depicts the..... 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
"A rare untranslated, original work in French documenting the slave trade--not merely reproducing and translating Clarkson or other English abolitionists" (Miller, p. 172). In this abolitionist pamphlet, the anonymous author describes the capture of La Vigilante, a French vessel from Nantes employed in the slave trade. It was apprehended by..... More
The first and only edition of the most detailed biography of the Jansenist theologian and doctor of the Sorbonne Godefroy (or Geoffroy) Hermant (1617-1690) by Adrien Baillet (1649-1706), a prolific historian and librarian and one of the most interesting and lesser-known French seventeenth-century intellectuals. Jansenism, a reform Catholic movement founded..... More
The first separately published edition of a short tract in parallel Italian and Latin by the Italian mathematician Benedetto Maria Castrone on Vauban’s theory of fortification. Published in the same year that the city of Palermo (the place of this book’s publication) adopted Vauban’s regular polygonal trace, the treatise had..... More
![The Seven Deadly Sins & The Seven Virtues]. Jean IV LECLERC, Edme CHARPY](/pictures/thumb/6087.jpeg?v=1638396397)
[BOUND WITH:] GRISPOLDI, Gaspare. VII Petitiones orationis dominicae correspondentes ad VII sacramenta XPI Ecclae nec non ad VII Virtutes... [Italy, circa 1600]. Engraved title and 5 engraved plates (nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7) out of 7. Three exceedingly rare separately published suites of engravings on the seven deadly sins..... More
A fine copy of the first French edition of Wright brothers' report from March 12, 1906 to the secretary of the recently created Aero Club of America, recording the longest flight in history at the time. This French edition was published the same year that the Wright brothers traveled to..... More
A remarkable survival. The exceedingly rare 2nd French edition (2 copies known) of this illustrated builder’s manual providing step by step instructions for the assembly of ecclesiastical built-in architectural components for interior church spaces by the French architect, garden designer, and engraver Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond (1679-1719). The work is..... More
First edition of a treatise, chiefly comprising letters and essays, providing an in-depth discussion of the discovery and promulgation of a technique for extracting oil from beech nuts. Beech nuts were particularly plentiful in England and their oil was both simple to extract and useful as fuel and for many..... 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
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