Rare 3-sheet engraved view depicting the ancient Campidoglio in Rome, an understudied and somewhat mysterious piece first published by Antonio Salamanca (1479-1562) in the middle of the 16th-century and thereafter at times included as part of the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, the famed composite atlas of graphic material related to antique... More

Rare first and only printing of the English astronomer John Bevis’s (1695-1771) legendary Uranographia Britannica [c. 1748], a celestial atlas of both high astronomical ambition and artistic beauty which was never formally published, its engraved sheets languishing in legal limbo, sequestered by the courts for some 35 years after the... More

Rare 19th-century shipping guide to the Pacific coast ports of North America and Hawaii. The volume was issued by the J. D. Spreckels & Bros. shipping company operating out of San Diego to highlight their services in the region and to orientate potential clients to the particular requirements of each... More

Very rare first and sole edition of this work on the underlying principles of insurance contracts and business ventures, focusing in particular on the psychological, ethical, and mathematical dimensions of gambling and risk-taking. Beginning with the premise that man’s most fundamental urge is to gain wealth, Codronchi discusses the effects..... More

Extremely rare printed proclamation concerning trade between the Danish West Indies – St Croix, St Thomas, and St John – with the mother territories of Denmark, Norway, and Schleswig-Holstein. In order to promote trade in sugar, wool, and coffee, Christian VII announces several tax breaks and confirms a monopoly of... More

First edition of a rare and fundamental handbook for seventeenth-century missionaries to Indochina.  The volume is a formative document by François Pallu (d. 1684) and Pierre Lambert de la Motte (d. 1679), founding members of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris and driving forces behind the establishment in 1665..... More

Only edition of this very rare celestial atlas: Schiller’s masterwork. The Coelum Stellatum Christianum presented the most recent stellar information in a completely different context, redrawing constellations with subjects from Christian iconography in place of traditional figures from classical mythology. For the signs of the zodiac, for example, Schiller substituted..... More

Rare first edition of this illustrated biography and genealogy of Matilda of Canossa, the medieval “sublime heroine” of papal fidelity, and one of the rare medieval women remembered for her military accomplishments.  Intent on dispelling various misconceptions about her as well as honoring her kinsman Alberico Cybo Malaspina, to whom..... More

Rare first edition of the Dutch physicist Martin van Marum’s (1750-1837) spectacular foundational work in high-energy electrical research and a landmark in scientific illustration from an era in which experimental data increasingly took the form of fleeting, transient effects highly resistant to standard methods of artistic representation. Appearing just after..... 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