A SHORT LIST FOR THE SHORTEST MONTH
A collection of rare eighteenth-century Rococo engravings
1. PILLEMENT, Jean. Cahier de Six Noeuds de Rubans. Ornee de Fleures, et Gravée en maniere de deux Crayons, par Inventée, et Dessinée par Jean Pillement. Premiere Peintre du Roy de Pologne
Paris: Chez Leviez. 1770
Complete set of six crayon manner engravings made from designs from Jean Pillement and engraved by Louis Gautier-Dagoty (two signed plates) and Arnaud-Eloi Gautier-Dagoty (four unsigned plates). Printed in black and red with an additional suite in the variant state printed in black, the set comprises a total of twelve plates including the two title pages (250x180mm). The engravings are trimmed close to the plate mark and pasted onto blank leaves (292x225mm). Slightly soiled in places and some staining to the monochrome prints but this is a lovely set, in very good condition, of a scarce collection of Rococo designs by one of the leading artists and designers working in the style. Worldcat records no copies. We have located only two complete sets at the Getty and the Ackland Museum at the UNC, Chapel Hill.
Nineteenth century mottled calf, gilt borders to covers, spine with five raised bands and gilt decoration in the compartments with red morocco label lettered in gilt. Rubbing to covers and extremities and wear to corners. Bound with six other collections of beautiful engravings of Rococo designs.
1. 6 stipple-engraved plates of garlands and bunches of flowers printed in red. Paris: Ches la Ve [Veuve] de F.Chéreau, Les Deux Pilliers d'Or, n.d. Although undated, these engravings will have been made between 1729 and 1755. François Chéreau died in 1729 and his celebrated printing business (he was “engraver to the Cabinet du Roi”) at Les Deux Pilliers d'Or (sic) was run by his widow (”Veuve Chéreau”) until her death in 1755. Plates measure c.75 x 100mm. Some slight soiling and marking to the margins of the plates but overall in very good condition. No copies traced.
2. Cahier de Petits Ornements et Figures Chinoises. Inventée et Dessinée par J. Pillement. Six engraved plates by J.J.Avril including pictorial title page. Paris: chèz le Pere et Avaulez. 1773, c.190 x 125mm. A scarce set of Chinese designs by Pillement “the best known of the designers and painters of eighteenth-century chinoiserie”. Save for some slight marking and an ink stain to the margin of the title page, this suite of prints is in superb condition. A full set is held at the BNF and the V&A have two of the plates.
3. Groupes de Fantaisies Inventés et Gravés par R[obert].M[enge]. Pariset a Paris. n.d. Engraved by Balchou [i.e. Jean-Joseph Baléchou]. 8 engraved plates including pictorial title, most c.160 x 110mm. Slight soiling to the title page and one other plate but otherwise in very good condition.
4. Fruits et Fleurs Naturels et fantastiques. Lyon chez Pariset. n.d. 8 engraved plates including pictorial title by R.M. Pariset, c.210 x 150mm. The plates are closely trimmed and the final four letters of ‘sculp’ are missing from the bottom right corner of the title page). Pariset worked in Lyon, Paris and London. His career was cut short by bankruptcy in 1762 and all his work predates this. This (and the previous) suite are perhaps his most important collections but his work is scarce. We have located a set of the Fruits et Fleurs and the Groupes de Fantaisies (bound together) at the Bibliotheque d’INHA but none in the UK or USA.
5. Nouveau Livre de Cartouches à l’Usage de différens Artistes. Paris: Chès la Ve de F. Chereau, aux 2 Piliers d’Or. n.d. c.165 x 120mm. 7 engraved plates by Marel after Borch including pictorial title page. Neither Borch nor Marel appear to be well-known or prolific but this is a rather splendid collection of Rococo cartouches with elements of grotesquery. By virtue of its shape, the cartouche lent itself to Rococo imaginings and books of cartouches are not uncommon in the eighteenth century but this set printed by Veuve Chéreau is rare. We have traced a full set at the Bibliotheque d’INHA and a single leaf (number two in the set) at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin.
6. Premier Livre de Fantaisies, Cartouches, Ornements, Fontaines, et Paysages. Gravé par P.Q.C. (Pierre-Quentin Chedel) Avec Privilege du Roy. Paris: Chèz la Ve de F. Chereau, aux 2 Piliers d’Or. n.d. c.115 x 170mm. 5 engraved plates including pictorial title. Chedel (17051763)was prolific but this first book of Fantaisies and Cartouches is scarce. Two copies of the Second Book are recorded (at the National Gallery of Scotland and the Sterling Morton Library) but we have located no copies of the Premier Livre.
Although all the engravings in this collection are fine, the most important artist represented here is Jean Pillement. From a family of painters, Pillement trained as painter in the manner of Watteau and Boucher before working as an ornament designer at the Gobelins tapestry factory. He was Court Painter to the King of Poland and lived for ten years in London where he contributed to the growing taste for the Rococo and Chinoiserie. He was endlessly inventive producing whimsical and charming designs that were used for wallpaper, architecture, silver and furniture. As a painter, he was highly regarded: he was Marie Antoinette’s personal painter at Petit-Trianon; he was admired by William Beckford and, after Pillement’s death the Duke of Wellington bought three landscapes for Stratfield Saye where they still hang.
[3420] £4,750
2. [ATKINSON, John Augustus] Sixteen Scenes taken from The Miseries of Human Life. By one of the Wretched.
London: Wm. Miller. 1807
First edition. Oblong, 167x200mm. 16 coloured plates with text opposite although lacking the final text leaf. Black half morocco, marbled paper covered boards, paper label to upper cover. Some wear to boards and loss to head of spine and to one centimetre of foot of spine. Cracking to spine but holding. The folding frontispiece is detached and there is some soiling but overall a good copy and the plates are in particularly good condition. A rare work showing a humorous and mildly satirical view of everyday life in Regency England.
[3810]
Cambridge Connections
3. KINGSLEY, Rev. Charles [with manuscript notes by G[eorge] B[rimley]].
PHAETHON; or Loose thoughts for Loose thinkers
Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1852
First edition. 8vo (198x125mm). pp. [iv], 100. Red half morocco with red morocco-grain cloth boards. Spine lettered in gilt: Kingsley’s Phaethon. M.S. Notes by G.B. Marbled endpapers. Rubbing to joints and spine, especially to head and foot, and to corners. Internally a very good copy with the text block in excellent condition. ffep has ownership inscription of “A. Macmillan”. This is Alexander Macmillan who, with his brother Daniel founded the publishing house that bore their name. Forty five of the pages are annotated, many in great detail, in very small handwriting in light blue ink. The notes are by George Brimley who was librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1845 to his death at the age of 37 in 1857. Brimley, Kingsley and Macmillan were all friends and shared the same intellectual interests. Brimley’s sister Caroline married Macmillan in 1851. This
£200
attractive little book thus embodies a series of touching personal links between author, publisher and annotator. Brimley was viewed as one of the finest critics of his age and although his output was small due to his constant ill health, his work was sufficiently well regarded that his collected essays, which includes a piece on Kingsley’s Westward Ho!, were published (by Macmillan) the year after his death. A review of this collection described Brimley as possessing “an acumen and a comprehensiveness which enabled him to seize a question in its breadth and depth”.
Kingsley’s Phaethon is a curious work. The central section is in the form of a Socratic Dialogue in which the figure of Socrates presents a defence of religious tradition and authority against the sophistry of subjective opinions. This argument reflected Kingsley’s own beliefs in a strong orthodox Christianity, popularly called “Muscular Christianity”, a term he disliked. Kingsley’s main target in Phaethon was the American transcendentalist writer and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson (thinly disguised as “Professor Windrush”) whom Kingsley regarded as preaching a moral relativism and individualism that would undermine society. However, there are also digs at Catholics and High Anglicanism.
George Brimley’s extensive marginalia demonstrate the subtlety of his critical thinking. His notes are beautifully balanced between sympathy for Kingsley’s general argument and exasperation at his unreasoning bombast. In one note, Brimley explodes: “This is simply shocking as a representation of Emerson’s theory of man” but elsewhere he writes of “The exquisite beauty of the last five pages of the dialogue”. Brimley’s astute summation of Kingsley’s style describes how, “once his point is gained, and he has to illuminate and vivify propositions no longer disputed, all the grace and richness of his poetic faculty and his generous heart come out”.
[3012]
Ethica and Metaphysica
4. Anonymous. Manuscript Notebook on Theology and Philosophy. n.p. n.d. [18th century]
A detailed notebook in Latin with extensive notes on theology and philosophy. Partly unpaginated: pp75; 380; 169. Half vellum, marbled paper covered boards, heavily rubbed and scuffed, corners and spine worn with loss to first compartment of spine. Internally very good. This is clearly a note book (hence its condition) either made from a series of lectures or written by a teacher for his own lectures. Abbreviations are used throughout and although these are fairly easy to decipher, the book does read as a set of very detailed notes. The book falls into two sections. The first is entitled “Ethica” although it concentrates on the arguments for the existence of God borrowing heavily from St Thomas Aquinas’s five proofs. The rest of the book comprises the second section “Metaphysica” and begins with a Prolegomena in an apparent reference to Kant. However, the notes contain headings from the Summa Theologica (de Scientia Dei and de
£950
Providentia Dei) and with its references to St Augustine, St Thomas and Leibniz who argued that faith and reason are both Divine gifts and so not contradictory, this a fascinating set of notes on philosophical theology as taught in the eighteenth century.
[3807]
One of the great works of Renaissance art theory
£475
5. da VINCI, Leonardo. A Treatise of Painting. Translated from The Original Italian, and adorn’d with a great Number of Cuts. To which is prefix’d, The Author’s Life; Done from the Last Edition of the French
London: Printed for J.Senex and W.Taylor. 1721
First English edition. 8vo. 200x120mm. pp. [16], 189, [19 index and adverts]. Engraved frontispiece and thirty-five engraved plates of which four are folding. Contemporary speckled calf, boards worn in places and corners bumped and a little worn. Rebacked in twentieth century with tan calf, five raised bands, red morocco label lettered in gilt. Title page printed in black and red. Internally very good with occasional slight marking and the plates are in excellent condition.
Leonardo began making notes on painting during his first Milan when he painted The Last Supper, the Virgin of the Rocks and the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle. He continued to record his theories and practical observations on painting for the rest of his life. His manuscripts were left to his heir Francesco Melzi who began the process of collecting Leonardo’s scattered writings on art into one work. They were not printed and, after Melzi’s death, his collection of Leonardo’s notebooks was dispersed. In 1651, those of Leonardo’s manuscripts on painting as were known to exist were published in Italian and French with this English translation appearing seventy years later. For the first time, the profound and radical ideas of the greatest mind of the Renaissance were available to ordinary artists.
[3852] £2,750
eight years. eight stones
6. COOPER, Thomas, Joshua. A Handful of Stones.
Docking, Norfolk: Coracle. 1996
Nine black and white photographs of rocks and stones acted upon by natural phenomena. Unpaginated, 24 leaves, 165x136mm. Near-fine in red cloth with black and white photograph pasted to upper cover. Limited, signed and numbered 89/100. Each photograph is preceded by a leaf on which is printed a two word description of how nature has affected the stones in the image - “salt soaked”, “ice cracked”, “leaf stained”. The last image, however, which is at the end and separate from the others is entitled simply “blasted”. An attractive and hypnotic collection inspired by the work of E.S.Curtis, the great American landscape photographer and recorder of American indigenous life. Cooper’s photographs were taken in Iceland, California, Britain and Israel between 1983 and 1992. His work is in the Tate. [2255]
THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF THE BOTTLE
7. BICKERDYKE, John [Charles Henry Cook]. The Curiosities of Ale & Beer: An Entertaining History. (Illustrated with over Fifty Quaint Cuts) In Part collected he late J.G.Fennell; now largely augmented with manifold matters of singular note and worthy memory by the Author and his friend J.M.D-.
London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1889
Second edition. Large 8vo. pp. xii, 449 [1bl]. Illustrated throughout with woodcuts, historiated initials and engraved head and tail pieces. Modern brown half morocco, brown linen covered boards, spine lettered in gilt. Top edge gilt, cream and pink marbled endpapers. In excellent condition. Internally very good with some toning to edges and slightly foxed in places. A nice, handsome copy. John Bickerdyke was the pseudonym of Charles Henry Cook, a South African writer. He seems to be best known now for his book on fishing although he wrote some fiction with excitable titles including Lady Val’s Elopement and Her Wild Oats.
The Curiosities of Ale & Beer is an encyclopaedic guide to the history of beer beginning, inauspiciously, with the “Suppression of Beer-shops in Egypt 2000BC” but quickly moving on to happier subjects such as the “medicinal qualities” of beer, “ale at breakfast”, “Songs and Verses relating to Ale and Beer”, and “Advantages of Malt Liquors to Labouring Classes”. An entertaining book with charming (”quaint” indeed) engravings and woodcuts many of medieval subjects.
8. [MACNEILL, Hector] Scotland's Skaith; or The History O’ Will and Jean owre true a tale! Together with some additional poems, by the author of The Harp. Embellished with Elegant Engravings.
Edinburgh: Printed by Mundell and Son 1795
Subscriber’s copy. 8vo. (223x140mm). Unpaginated, [pp62]. Engraved frontispiece and two further engraved plates and tailpiece. Two title pages. Contemporary half calf, marbled paper covered boards, green label to spine, lettered in gilt. Corners bumped and rubbed. Slight foxing and browning and staining to first page of “Subscribers Names”. Overall a nice copy of a book which went through numerous editions (under different imprints) in its first year (1795), ESTC recording this as the second edition with two copies in the UK (BL and NLS) and eight in the US. Two ownership inscriptions: “A.C.Cunninghame Graham (Bontic..?), Gartmore” and “M.H.Spiers Oct 1795, A Present from my Father”. A Peter Spiers is noted in the list of subscribers as ordering three copies and it seems certain that this is one of those. Hamish Macneill (1746-1818) spent his early working life as a clerk shuttling between various jobs in Britain and the West Indies, all the time attempting to establish himself as a writer. A pamphlet in support of the slave trade appeared in 1788, written at the request of a friend (with friends like these...etc) although, realising his naivety, MacNeill did seek to suppress it. Turning to his Scottish heritage, he published The Harp. A Legendary Tale in 1789 and his literary career thrived thereafter, Scotland providing the background and subject for most of his works. Scotland’s Skaith is a ballad on the dangers of drink.
[3856]
£250
POSH WEIGHTWATCHERS
GOLDSMITH. An Almanack for the Year of our Lord God, MDCCLXIV. Being Bissextile or LEAP-YEAR. Wherein are contain’d, NECESSARY RULES, and Useful Tables; With a new Alphabetical Chronology of remarkable Events; to which are now added, The proper Days and Hours for transferring Stocks and receiving Dividends; as also a List of Holidays kept at the public Offices. Calculated by John Goldsmith.
London: Printed by R. Hett, Junior, for the Company of Stationers.
10 blank leaves, title page, 24 printed leaves with 11 blanks interleaved and 6 further blank leaves at the end. Contemporary red morocco, decorative gilt-roll floral border to covers, spine decorated in gilt, silver clasps lacking hinged catches, all edges gilt, rubbing to corners. An attractive binding. Internally very good, with some soiling and cropping with slight loss of text.Handwritten notes on some of the blank pages. The first blank leaf has a note about a legal agreement dated 1699 with the following two leaves containing a list of names and weights under the heading “Weighed at Swalarde (?) Aug 5 1763”. Here we learn that Lord Strathmore weighed 12st 4lb with Lady Strathmore coming in at 9st 4lb with Mr Lidden tipping the scales at an impressive 16st. 6lb. Sir Thomas Clavering is listed at 15st 12. The Claverings are a Durham family and only a few years after this Almanack he was elected MP for County Durham. Presumably the owner of this pretty little book ran a very upmarket chapter of Weight Watchers. Goldsmith’s first almanac appeared in 1663, this edition of 1764 appearing to be very rare with only the BL copy recorded in ESTC and Worldcat.
[3857]
BEHAVE
10. [NICKLIN, Susan]. Address to a Young Lady on her entrance into the world. In two volumes
London: Printed for Hookham and Carpenter 1796
£275
First edition. Two volumes in one. 8vo. 209x120mm. pp. [1], [1bl], 202; 216. Lacks title page to volume II. N1 (pp193/4) bound in after N3 (197/8). Contemporary dark blue straight-grained morocco, single fillet gilt border to covers, spine lettered in gilt, turn-ins decorated in gilt, marbled endpapers. Slight rubbing to extremities and a scratch mark to upper cover, otherwise a handsome binding. Some foxing but overall very good internally. Front free endpaper has inscription: “Margaret Townley the Gift of her Friend Maria Morgan March 27th 1803” and the title page has the ownership inscription “Maria Morgan 1799”. Susan Nicklin was a governess and her book instructs young women on the threshold of adulthood and seeks to prevent them from succumbing to the temptations which the world offers. Her advice is based on Christian teaching with chapters on reading the Scriptures, keeping the Sabbath, observance of Truth, the iniquity of Pride and the need for Fortitude of Mind. This first edition is rare, ESTC locating three copies in the UK and four in the US.
[3860]
£250
FOR THE USE AND PLEASURE OF YOUNG LADIES
Leipzig: bei Adam Friedrich Böhme. 1799
106x64mm. Additional engraved title page and engraved frontispiece, 16pp, title page, [2 contents], 282, two folding leaves of music, fourteen engraved plates including one coloured showing a hairy spider stealing eggs from a bird’s nest. Green pictorial wrappers, worn and creased and split to upper joint. Internally very good with slight browning. The first sixteen pages contain information about seasons, lunar movements, star signs, Saint’s days. The main part of the book is a collection of poems, stories and advice for ladies, for their “use and pleasure”. An interesting and charming little book.
[3859] £100
11. ANONYMOUS. Leipziger Taschenbuch für Frauenzimmer zum Nutzen u Vergnügen für das Jahr 1799
