First edition of this classic in the history of science, a nice large genuine example of the last of Kepler’s works to appear in his lifetime, and in the judgment of Prof. Owen Gingerich, “the chief vehicle for the recognition of his astronomical accomplishments.” — DSB, p. 304: It contains... More
Rare 2-sheet etching/engraving (here complete with its third sheet of engraved text in Dutch and French) depicting a winter festival celebrating the running of the “Brewers’ Icebreaker” to clear the Amstel River at Amsterdam during the first years of the 18th century. This large print, with its hundreds of lively... More
Very rare (and highly unusual) separately issued satirical etching by Robert Newton (1777-98), the prodigious but short-lived English caricaturist who worked during the era of the great cartoonists James Gillray (1756-1815) and Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827). The etching, titled Imps, depicts, in three rows, some 20 fanciful designs for spritely demons... More
Very rare first and only edition of a remarkable Spanish relación tallying the spoils taken in one of the most decisive and important naval victories in European theater of the American Revolutionary War, the capture of 55 British ships by a joint Spanish-French fleet in what would come to be called the... More
Rare mid-19th-century printed textile illustrating an archetypal story of the ideal French mariner, a fisherman’s son named Jacques, who left home as a boy to sail to the Antilles with the merchant marines, met with many adventures on the high seas (shipwreck, pitched battle on deck, encounters with natives), and... More
Rare first and only edition, first issue, of the Vicenza architect Ottavio Revesi Bruti’s (c. 1585-1648) richly illustrated folio describing his new instrument for accurately constructing scale drawings of the architectural orders without reliance on laborious calculations, a boon both for practical architects eager to avoid difficult mathematics on the... More
Very rare first and only edition – illustrated with 4 ‘paper instruments’ complete with their volvelles – of this understudied early 17th-century treatise on astrological prognostication, a work of some note for its recognition (and acceptance) of recent groundbreaking telescopic discoveries made by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and others. Published in... More
Rare first and only edition of a treatise on trigonometry – illustrated with numerous woodcut diagrams – by James Hume of Godscroft, a Scottish mathematician living in Paris. The work includes information on logarithms as recently discovered by John Napier in 1614 (including a folding table of logarithms based on... More
Rare first edition of the naturalist Charles de l’Ecluse’s (Carolus Clusius; 1526-1609) botany of Sir Francis Drake’s 1577-80 circumnavigation (the first by an Englishman), the first printed book in botanical literature to be substantially based on a specific trans-Atlantic voyage of any kind, and indeed the first substantial record of... More
![Tariffa de pexi e mesure. [Qui comincia la utilissima opera chiamata taripha…]](/pictures/thumb/5773B.jpg?v=1541451475)
Rare first edition (1503) of the first printed Venetian ‘tariffa’ (Tucci, “Tariffe,” p. 92) published at the height of Venice’s hegemony as a trading partner in the eastern Mediterranean and only the 2nd printed ‘tariffa’ overall (see below). The ‘tariffa’ is a comprehensive mercantile manual compiled to bring order to... 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
Rare first edition of one of the first (if not the first) published views of the epoch-making iron bridge over the River Severn at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, the first major bridge in the world to be made of cast iron, a harbinger of modern architecture, and a monument from the... More
Very rare separately issued print, among the earliest engravings by the printmaker Giovanni Battista Falda (1643-78) – he was 20 years old at the time -- celebrating the contemporary architectural achievements in Rome of Pope Alexander VII (reigned 1655-67), the pontiff renowned for his commitment to ambitious urban planning projects... More
Rare first and only edition of one of the first, if not the first Western monograph devoted to a Russian work of art, namely the icon of the 4th-century warrior saint Theodore Straelates housed in the Rieterkirche St. Marien und Christophorus in Kalbensteinberg, Bavaria, an important pilgrimage church located on... More
First edition of this generously illustrated biography of the epoch-making artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), written by the contemporary art historian Filippo Baldinucci (1624-97). The work, a classic of art-historical biography in the mode of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite, was commissioned by Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-89) in the year following... More
First edition of the Italian Dominican Simone Parlasca’s rare treatise on this New World flower – and the first work to contain an illustration of the plant. The passion flower was adopted as a Christian symbol because of its unique physical resemblance to the Arma Christi, the instruments of torture... More
Very rare first edition (1565) – virtually unacquirable for the past half century or more – of the first printed work devoted to the botanical and medicinal discoveries made in the Americas, a treatise which, through its later expansions and numerous translations, would remain “for many years the most important... More
![Relazion que dio Pedro de Obiedo marinero natural del Condado de Nieva y Antonio de Covos Carpintero de Rivera. Personas que venian en los dos navios del Obispo de Plasencia, y dize lo siguiente por una memoria firmada de sus nombres que dejaron al Lic[encia]do Julian Gutierrez de Altamirano, Teniente General en el Reino de Chile](/pictures/thumb/5693.jpg?v=1540844311)
Extraordinary manuscript of a 16th-century relación written in Chile that provides an account of a 1540 shipwreck in the Straits of Magellan and describes the travails faced by the survivors during their long sojourn in the South American wilderness. Itself a remarkable record of an early Spanish voyage to the... More