An unusually fresh example of the rare first edition of a Baroque German penmanship textbook self-published by this “Schul-, Schreib- und Rechnenmeister” from Frankfurt am Main, with 54 engraved plates. After assuring his readers that these methods have been honed throughout his tenure as a teacher of penmanship, Schirmer begins..... More

First edition – and fine copy – of Piranesi’s incomparable reconstruction of Rome’s Campus Martius, a work famed for its archaeological ambition, its graphic inventiveness, and as a sourcebook for the architectural imagination which continues to influence architectural theorists and practitioners today. “An exceptional personality, Piranesi transfigured his personal failure..... More

Very rare example of a bespoke (and nearly) blank album amicorum from 18th-century Holland, preserved in entirely contemporary condition and complete with its original, elaborately decorated binding. The only entry in the book is its watercolor frontispiece of a putto as an emblem of painting: The cupid is posed as..... More

Only edition of this unusual volume surveying the wooded holdings of the Count of Eu, in Upper Normandy, a work comprised entirely of 40 fine, single-sided engravings, including a pictorial title page, 13 calligraphic plates of text, charts and tables, 5 botanical and industrial images, and 21 handsome, precise maps..... More

Rare first edition of this landmark in the history of personal hygiene. Perret, a barber-surgeon, is commonly credited with having invented the first safety razor, appearing both in print and pictured for the first time in the present work. Being clean shaven was a mark of respectability in Enlightenment Paris..... More

Two rare folio-size maritime insurance policies from 1770s Marseille relating to mercantile voyages to France’s American colonies in the Caribbean, and valuable witnesses to the more practical, bureaucratic aspects of maritime trade in late 18th-century France. Each document is illustrated with the three large woodcut seals of the city and..... More

Archive of 40 very rare letterpress and manuscript documents – many of them bilingual – from the city of Colmar concerning the regulation of prices and other professional practices among butchers, fishmongers and bakers between the years 1618 and 1783. The archive offers a vivid glimpse into the market stalls..... More

Very rare first complete edition (after the 1781 Havana edition) of an early Spanish-language pilot guide on the navigation of the Antilles, Caribbean, Tierra Firme, and Gulf of Mexico, including detailed information on the location of the reefs, sounds, bays, channels, ports, and inlets of the southern United States ranging..... More

First edition of this lavishly illustrated mining classic describing an amalgamation process for removing gold and silver from various ores. As the process did not require the usual smelting of the ore, it saved an enormous quantity of fuel and was widely adapted throughout the Habsburg Empire and elsewhere in..... More

Rare first edition of this handsomely illustrated treatise on the cultivation and manufacture of linen, a staple of the textile and paper industries until the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney (a mere two years after this book was published) and cheaper methods of paper processing curtailed its..... More

Rare first edition, first issue, of the first English-language version of “La Marseillaise,” published in London by the music-seller John Bland (active 1776-c.1794) barely six months after the famous French march was first composed (on a single night in April of 1792) and some three years before the song was..... More

Set of 3 very rare 18th-century sales catalogues – unrecorded in American libraries – from the emporium of the Leipzig art dealer C. C. H. Rost (d. 1798), including his richly illustrated inventory of plaster casts made after the “best original” statues from Greco-Roman antiquity, among which are actual size..... More

Intriguing over-life-size painting of a female allegorical sculpture set in an architectural niche, a rare surviving example of a type of ephemeral decoration most closely associated with the scenography of the neoclassical theater and with the (often elaborate) temporary festival structures especially popular in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth..... More