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Books > Miscellany (61 items)
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Results Page:
(total 7 pages)
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 ADLUM, John (1759-1836)
A Memoir on the Cultivation of the Vine in America, and the Best Mode of Making Wine
Washington, DC: William Greer, 1828. 12mo (7 x 4 1/4 inches). 179, [1] pp. Errata page on verso of the terminal leaf. Engraved folding frontispiece reproducing a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the author. (Light foxing). Contemporary black morocco-backed marbled paper covered boards, spine ruled and lettered in gilt.
The enlarged second edition of the first American book on wine making.
Adlum was a pioneering American agriculturalist, a promoter of American winemaking, and an early proponent of government-sponsored scientific and agricultural research in the Federal Period. After serving in the Revolutionary War and working on several early state surveys, he established a 200-acre farm and vineyard in Georgetown. There, he devoted most of his remaining years to the study and cultivation of American grapes and wine-making techniques. Adlum provided Thomas Jefferson with vine clippings and bottles of his wine.
The second edition of the first American book devoted to viticulture, after the first of 1823, contains significant additions and revisions. This second edition includes letters written to Adlum by Thomas Jefferson, and the identification for the first time of the Catawba (a native American grape) as Adlum's prize winemaking grape. Scarce and important, both in the history of viticulture and in the development of American natural history.
Rink 1499; American Imprints 31902; Longone & Longone, American Cookbooks, p.44 and N1
#24050 $5,000.00  
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 ALECHINSKY, Pierre (b.1927, artist). - Michel SICARD
Flore Danoise
Paris: Robert & Lydie Dutrou, 1991 . Folio (15 3/8 x 10 1/2 inches). Half-title and title in red, Text in French and Danish, printed in black with headings in red and black. 7 coloured plates by Alechinsky, each an "eau-forte originale sur facsimile de Flora Danica," each numbered and signed in pencil by Alechinsky. Unbound as issued in original limp paper wrappers, the upper cover with etched calligraphic decorated title printed in red and silver, plexiglass slipcase.
Fine copy: the edition limited to 165 copies signed by the author, this copy number 7 of the 125 copies for sale by the publishers.
An approximate translation of the colophon: "Flore Danoiose, a poem by Michel Sicard - dedicated to his daughter Flora - and the Danish translation by Uffee Harder are both set by hand in 20 point Garamond type. The seven original etchings by Pierre Alechinsky are printed on facsimiles of plates from the 18th-century botanical work: Flora Danica." The excellent images - reminiscent of the work of Max Ernst - provide a fresh view of some of the more esoteric images from Flora Danica. The literary/artistic equivalent of cloud-imagined figures and landscapes, Alechinsky offers a sophisticated view which complements Sicard's text/poems to his daughter.
#23692$5,500.00
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 ANGLO-INDIAN School, 19th-century
A wooden binding with inlaid carved wood panels and inlaid white metal bone and stained bone borders
[19th century]. Wooden binding (10 1/4 x 6 3/8 x 2 3/8 inches approx.), the spine with deep-relief carving on a single large panel of stylised flowers, fruit and foliage and two birds around a central lotus flower, with verical borders of black ebony, bone and micro-mosaic patterning of white metal (oxidised), bone, green-stained bone and ebony, the head and foot of the spine of bone, the two covers attached to the spine by pairs of metal hinges, the covers each with a deep-relief carving on a single large panel: one of stylised flowers, fruit and foliage and eight birds and a lion attacking a stag, the other of stylised flowers, fruit and foliage and six birds and a lion, each bordered with panels of black ebony, bone and micro-mosaic patterning of white metal (oxidised), bone, green-stained bone and ebony, the inner surface of each cover with an narrow onlaid border surrounding an onlaid purple velvet panel (some damage and losses to the onlays and to the carved lotus flower on the spine).
A spectacular piece of workmanship.
This binding was probably designed as an outer (unattached) covering to a small format photograph album, and sold in British India as an exotic momento of an exotic sub-continent. Although the workmanship is Indian, the design of the carved panels are reminiscent of the douanier Rousseau-esque rain forest teeming with life depicted in the pen and ink drawings produced on Bali (particularly in Ubud).
#13228$1,200.00
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 ANONYMOUS
The Curious Book
Edinburgh: Printed by John Pillans, for John Thomas ... and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1826. 8vo (7 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches). Half-title. Later half green calf over green cloth covered boards by Riviere & Son, spine in six compartments with raised bands, red morocco lettering piece in the second compartment, others with a repeat decoration in gilt.
#24568$100.00
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 BARRINGTON, Daines (1727-1800)
Miscellanies
London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1781. Quarto (10 x 8 1/4 inches). Two engraved portraits, two engraved maps (one folding), and five tables (one folding). Contemporary marbled boards, expertly rebacked to style in brown calf, flat spine with gilt rules and decorations, red morocco gilt lettering piece in the second compartment, original calf tips.
The first edition of this fascinating compilation of articles, including an important early work on navigation to the North Pole, a narrative of a voyage to the Northwest coast of America and one of the earliest English accounts of Mozart.
"Contains a curious collection of articles, including Mourelle's Journal of a voyage in 1775, to explore the coast of America, northward of California, by the second pilot of the fleet, Don Francisco Antonio Mourelle, in the King's schooner, called the Sonora, and commanded by Don Francisco de la Bodega. This is the first edition of the only contemporary account in English of this important voyage fitted out by the Viceroy of Mexico to explore the northwest coast of America. Mourelle served as secretary to the Viceroy and later wrote another work relating to the voyage of the frigate Princessa to the Pacific Ocean, in 1780-81. His account was used by Captain James Cook on his third Voyage. Also included is Tracts on the possibility of approaching the North Pole, in which are laid down the results of numerous inquiries addressed to whaling captains, especially to those who frequented the coasts of Labrador and Greenland. The whole comprises a compilation of extraordinary value for the geography of the northern regions, including Alaska" (Hill).
This fascinating assemblage also contains natural history essays (with one on the Linnaean system) and four essays on geniuses of the day, including one of the first accounts in English of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with a fine oval portrait of the young prodigy. "Daines Barrington presented a particularly vivid picture of the childhood genius to his colleagues at the Royal Society in London [first published in book form here]. He described Mozart's ability to improvise operative music, singing and accompanying himself at the keyboard, to imaginary Italian texts on the subjects of love and betrayal. He also placed before the boy an unfamiliar duet: without the slightest hesitation the lad assigns the alto part to his father, sings the soprano himself, realizes the figured bass and throws in the violin parts as necessary. This feat involves reading several different clefs simultaneously, the difficulty of which Barrington attempted to explain to his musically untrained colleagues by comparing it to the simultaneous reading of several poems, each possessing its own character, expression, and declamatory rules, and each written in a different alphabet. Barrington's report illustrates the fascination that the young boy engendered not only in concert audiences, but also in the scientific world" (Mozart and the Keyboard Culture of His Time, an online exhibit by the Cornell University Library Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts (Ithaca, New York: 2002)).
Hill (2004) 56; Howes B177; Lada-Mocarski 34; Sabin 3628; Streeter Sale 2445.
#22366$2,450.00
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 BARRINGTON, Daines (1727-1800)
Miscellanies
London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1781. Quarto (10 1/2 x 8 inches). Two engraved portraits, two engraved maps (one folding), and five tables (one folding). Contemporary tree calf, spine in six compartments with raised bands, the bands flanked by gilt fillets, red morocco lettering-piece in the second compartment, red-stained edges.
A very fine copy of the first edition of this fascinating compilation of articles, including an important early work on navigation to the North Pole, a narrative of a voyage to the Northwest coast of America and one of the earliest English accounts of Mozart.
"Contains a curious collection of articles, including Mourelle's Journal of a voyage in 1775, to explore the coast of America, northward of California, by the second pilot of the fleet, Don Francisco Antonio Mourelle, in the King's schooner, called the Sonora, and commanded by Don Francisco de la Bodega. This is the first edition of the only contemporary account in English of this important voyage fitted out by the Viceroy of Mexico to explore the northwest coast of America. Mourelle served as secretary to the Viceroy and later wrote another work relating to the voyage of the frigate Princessa to the Pacific Ocean, in 1780-81. His account was used by Captain James Cook on his third Voyage. Also included is Tracts on the possibility of approaching the North Pole, in which are laid down the results of numerous inquiries addressed to whaling captains, especially to those who frequented the coasts of Labrador and Greenland. The whole comprises a compilation of extraordinary value for the geography of the northern regions, including Alaska" (Hill).
This fascinating assemblage also contains natural history essays (with one on the Linnaean system) and four essays on geniuses of the day, including one of the first accounts in English of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with a fine oval portrait of the young prodigy. "Daines Barrington presented a particularly vivid picture of the childhood genius to his colleagues at the Royal Society in London [first published in book form here]. He described Mozart's ability to improvise operative music, singing and accompanying himself at the keyboard, to imaginary Italian texts on the subjects of love and betrayal. He also placed before the boy an unfamiliar duet: without the slightest hesitation the lad assigns the alto part to his father, sings the soprano himself, realizes the figured bass and throws in the violin parts as necessary. This feat involves reading several different clefs simultaneously, the difficulty of which Barrington attempted to explain to his musically untrained colleagues by comparing it to the simultaneous reading of several poems, each possessing its own character, expression, and declamatory rules, and each written in a different alphabet. Barrington's report illustrates the fascination that the young boy engendered not only in concert audiences, but also in the scientific world" (Mozart and the Keyboard Culture of His Time, an online exhibit by the Cornell University Library Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts (Ithaca, New York: 2002)).
Hill (2004) 56; Howes B177; Lada-Mocarski 34; Sabin 3628; Streeter Sale 2445.
#23391$2,850.00
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 BAYER, Theophilus Gottlieb Siegfried (1694-1738)
Museum Sinicum in quo Sinicae Linguae et Literaturae ratio explicateur
St. Petersburg: ex Typographia Academiae Imperatoriae, 1730. 2 volumes in one, octavo (8 x 5 inches). 74 engraved plates (56 of the plates presented as pairs, recto and verso of 28 laminated sheets, as issued), occasional illustration. Contemporary calf, expert repairs to some extremities, brown morocco lettering-piece, marbled endpapers.
A fine copy of the first edition of 'the first detailed book about the Chinese language to be printed in Europe' (C.R. Boxer).
The Prussian-born classical scholar T. S. Bayer was a pioneer of sinology, or the study of the Chinese language. He published his first sinological work, De Eclipsi Sinica in 1718 when he was in Koningsberg. In 1726 he became keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersberg, but continued his studies of China in general and the Chinese language in particular. The present work, published in 1730, includes an important introductory survey of the history of sinology, followed by the main work: 'the beginning of a great tradition of Chinese linguistics in Russia' (Harbsmeier). The great British physician and collector, William Hunter, was able to buy Beyer's substantial library of books, manuscripts and correspondence: this collection is still held at Glasgow University Library.
Cordier Sinica 1658; Löwendahl 366; cf. K. Lundbaek T.S. Bayer, 1694-1738: Pioneer Sinologist (London, 1986); Lust 1007; Morrison II, p.433
#24988$6,500.00
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BELL, William
A Dissertation on the Following Subject: What Causes Principally Contribute to Render A Nation Populous? And What Effect Has The Populousness of a Nation on its Trade?
Cambridge: 1756. Quarto. [4],36pp. Minor foxing. Very good. Disbound.
A prize-winning essay written by William Bell, fellow at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Among other truths espoused herein, Bell claims that the poor - both countries and people - will decline to reproduce: "Very few of those, who find it a matter of the greatest difficulty to subsist themselves, will lay themselves under the additional obligation of providing for others." He praises agrarian nations as the most fruitful, in both population and contribution to commerce.
ESTC T101713; Kress 5493; Goldsmith 9105.
#23485$1,250.00
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 BENEDICT, Vida G. (binder). - Charles HOLME (editor), [Bernard H. NEWDIGATE, Douglas COCKERELL, William Dana ORCUTT and others] (contributors)]
L'Art du Livre [Numéro Spécial du "Studio" Printemps 1914] étude sur quelques-uns des dernières créations en typographie, ornamentation de textes, et reliure, exécutées en Europe et en Amérique
London, Paris and New York: [printed for the proprietors by Ballantyne & Co. Ltd. and Edmund Evans Ltd., published at the offices of] "Le Studio" Ltd, 1914. Small folio (11 1/4 x 8 inches). Numerous plates and illustrations (5 coloured, others printed in two or more colours, 1 double-page). Brown morocco by Vida G. Benedict, the covers with an overall gilt open lattice-work design, the intersections marked with small neo-gothic crosses, the spine divided into three unequal compartments by two wide raised bands, lettered in gilt in the second compartment, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, original paper wrappers bound in, cloth slipcase.
An attractive American designer binding on an important early-20th century survey of the book-arts in Europe, and America.
This is the French edition of a work which was also published by The Studio in English under the title The Art of the Book (London: 1914). In the present copy the section dealing with America and some of the images from the Swedish section are bound at the front of the book rather than the rear (as published). The work is divided into eight sections: typography in England; binding in England; the art of the book in Germany; France; Austria; Hungary; Sweden; and America.
In an apparent acknowledgment of the source of her inspiration for the decoration of the present binding, an image of a binding by Greta Morssing has been moved to a position towards the front of the book by the binder. Vida G. Benedict, of Buffalo, NY, a skilled designer binder, is listed by L.S. Thompson in his survey "Hand Bookbinding in the United States since the Civil War" pp.97-121 of vol.5, issue 2 of Libri, (January 1954).
#23811$400.00
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 BLACKSTONE, William (1723-1780)
Commentaries on the Laws of England
Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press, 1770. 4 volumes, quarto (10 1/2 x 8 inches). Final blank in vol.I. 2 engraved plates (1 folding). (Light worming to fore-edge margin of the first half of vol.II, and the first and last few leaves of vol.III). Contemporary calf, covers simply tooled in blind, red morocco lettering-pieces to spines lettered in gilt. Provenance: Richard Cope Hopton (Canon Frome Court, Ledbury, Hereford, early armorial bookplate).
Fourth edition: a fine unsophisticated set of this early edition of the single most important work on English law. A work which had an undeniable influence on the course of jurisprudence in the United States.
"Blackstone's great work on the laws of England [first published in 1765-1769] is the extreme example of justification of an existing state of affairs by virtue of its history....Until the Commentaries, the ordinary Englishman had viewed the law as a vast, unintelligible and unfriendly machine; nothing but trouble, even danger, was to be expected from contact with it. Blackstone's great achievement was to popularize the law and the traditions which had influenced its formation....If the English constitution survived the troubles of the next century, it was because the law had gained a new popular respect, and this was due in part to the enormous success of Blackstone's work" (Printing and the Mind of Man). A measure of this success can be gained from the fact that the Commentaries were reprinted a dozen times in England over the ensuing two decades, and translated into French, German, Italian, and Russian. Robert Bell produced the first American edition in Philadelphia in 1771-1772.
Cf. Grolier Club English 52; cf. Printing and the Mind of Man 212; cf. Rothschild 407.
#24061$3,500.00
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Copyright © 2002-2010 Donald A. Heald
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