Art & Architecture

Contact Alex Day or Andrea Mazzocchi

Art & Architecture encompasses a broad sweep of material, from early works concerning architecture and architectural history, and books and manuscripts on the fine arts and aesthetics, antiquities and archaeology, to pattern and design books, and private press books and fine bindings. The department also handles original artwork, artistic archives, posters, and propaganda material.

  1. ALAI, Beatrice.

    Le miniature Italiane del Kupferstichkabinett di Berlino.

    Florence, Edizioni Polistampa, 2019.

    From the presentation leaf: ‘Bernard Quaritch Ltd is delighted to be a sponsor of this magnificent publication. We feel sure that our German founder, both as publisher of scholarly works and dealer in medieval manuscripts, would have been proud to support Beatrice Alai’s catalogue of the Italian...

    £75

  2. ALBUM

    of watercolours and pencil drawings including roses and tulips, birds, insects, 12 architectural scale drawings, and two...

    England, mid-eighteenth century?

    An attractive sketchbook, seemingly the work of an unidentified architect or decorative artist.

    £2250

  3. ALLOM, Thomas and George Newenham WRIGHT.

    China in a series of views, displaying the scenery, architecture, and social habits,...

    London, Peter Jackson, late Fisher, Son, & Co., [1848-56?].

    Later edition of this handsome work on China, first published by Fisher, Son, & Co. in London and Paris in 1843, illustrated with 124 steel-engraved plates and vignettes to each of the four engraved titles.

    £1250

  4. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...

    Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

    A lavishly illustrated catalogue, tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period. Some 367 printed books, manuscripts, and maps are presented in chronological order, highlighting the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented...

    £85

  5. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Materials: Theatre of Machine Books, 1472–1800.

    Toronto, A.E Publications, 2023.

    One of twenty-five finely bound numbered deluxe copies, with four original leaves bound in, of this extraordinary survey of four centuries of machine books, tracing the evolution of printing techniques and draughtsmanship alongside the development of the machines themselves.

    £950

  6. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...

    Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.

    A finely bound deluxe copy, one of twenty copies, of Mark Andrews’s lavishly illustrated catalogue tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period.

    £675

  7. [ANTIQUARIAN]

    Architectural Antiquities from the Sussex Coast.

    [Sussex], July 21st – 10th August 1837.

    An interesting and charming antiquarian manuscript illustrating medieval fonts, gothic windows, brasses, architectural details, and funerary sculptures found in churches along the Sussex coast. The anonymous author/draughtsman gives provenances and historical detail to the drawings, which capture the...

    £950

  8. Aristotle: From Antiquity to the Modern Era.

    Preface by Martin J. Gross. Essays by Benjamin Morison and Barbara Scalvini.

    Lewes, D. Giles Ltd for the Martin J. Gross Family Foundation, 2021.

    Aristotle’s influence towers over western philosophy and science. His astonishing range and depth – philosophy and logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics – make him indisputably the most important intellectual figure in the western tradition before the modern age.

    £30

  9. BARKER, Nicolas.

    Bibliotheca Lindesiana. The Lives and Collections of Alexander William, 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th Earl of...

    The Roxburghe Club, 1977.

    The Bibliotheca Lindesiana was perhaps the finest private library assembled in the nineteenth century. Nicolas Barker considers the library’s purpose and traces the circumstances of its formation in detail, in the process adding considerably to the biographies of the 25th and 26th Earls of Crawford,...

    £50

  10. BARKER, Nicolas, and David QUENTIN.

    The Library of Thomas Tresham and Thomas Brudenell. With an introduction by John Martin Robinson.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2006.

    Sir Thomas Tresham (1543–1605) remains best-known for his buildings, especially the market house at Rothwell, the Triangular Lodge at Rushton and Lyveden New Bield. His library, one of the largest in England of its time, has hitherto attracted comparatively little interest. Now, as a result of a careful...

    £95

  11. BARKER, Nicolas, ed.

    The Pirie Library. A Short-Title Catalogue of the Collection of Robert S Pirie.

    London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2019.

    The library of Robert S Pirie, ‘one of the finest private libraries of English literature, not just of our time but of all time’ (James Stourton), was sold at Sotheby’s New York on 2-4 December 2015. This account is based on Sotheby’s catalogue of the sale, and augmented by Mr Pirie’s acquisition...

    £25

  12. [BASKERVILLE PRESS.]

    The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

    Third and final edition of Baskerville’s octavo prayer book. The prayers for the Royal Family on cancels B8, C6, and D3 include the name of Queen Charlotte, whom George III married in 1761. This copy also includes the ‘occasional prayers’ which were only printed for part of the edition and are...

    £1200

  13. BEISNER, Monika.

    Dante Alighieri: La Commedia in 100 tavole.

    Turin, Attini, 2021.

    Limited edition, one of 500 numbered sets, of Monika Beisner’s one hundred illustrations of the Divine Comedy, each accompanying one canto, conveying with remarkable fidelity the vivacity of Dante’s verse.

    £60

  14. BELLONI, Girolami, Marchese.

    Del Commercio dissertazione.

    Rome, Niccolo and Marco Pagliarini, 1757.

    Second edition to be authorized by Belloni, (first, 1750) – the first edition to include the author’s considerations on ‘imaginary money’ (pp. 135-154) – of a work notable for its argument in favour of restrictions on the export of money by the Vatican banker Girolamo Belloni (1688–1760)....

    £300

  15. [BENDISCIOLI, Faustino.]

    Quadro ossia saggio epilogato del Sistema di liberta’ proclamato dai Francesi.

    Milan, Stamperia [dei Patrioti d’Italia] di Strada Nuova, [1799].

    An impassioned tract attacking the claims of a new life of liberty promoted in Europe after the French Revolution, very rarely to be found in any of the three editions published in the same year.

    £200

  16. BLANQUI, Jérôme Adolphe, l’Ainé.

    Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe, depuis les anciens jusqu’à nos jours, suivie...

    Paris, Guillaumin, 1837.

    First edition of ‘the first major history of political economy’ (The New Palgrave). Blanqui (1798–1854) taught at the Institution Massin, where he came into contact with J. B. Say, who was greatly impressed by him. In 1833, he succeeded Say as holder of the chair of political and industrial economy...

    £125

  17. [BODONI.] 

    D. Francesco Giacinto Rovero Cavaliere di Piea, e della Sagra Religione, ed Ordine Militare de’ Santi Morizio, e...

    Saluzzo, Giovandomenico Bodoni, [December 1783]. 

    Very rare survival, apparently unrecorded, of this bill of public order laws printed by Giovandomenico Bodoni at Saluzzo. 

    £1250

  18. [BOLOGNA.] 

    Delle oggetti di belle arti nel famoso Tempio di S. Paolo in Bologna e delle vicissitudini di esso brevi notizie. 

    Bologna, ‘nella stamperia di San Tommaso d’Aquino’, 1831. 

    First edition of this detailed description of the Baroque masterpieces in the church of San Paolo Maggiore (or San Paolo Decollato) in Bologna, among them works by Guercino and Cavedoni. 

    £275

  19. BOLZANI, A. M.

    Wegweiser zum Seidenbau für Nord-Deutschland und insbesondere für Preussen.

    Berlin, Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1831.

    First edition. Bolzani, originally from Como in Italy, was a picture- and print-dealer in Berlin who also ran a successful silkworm cultivation enterprise. His book deals with all aspects of sericulture. Bolzani was especially keen to have Prussian state funding for silkworm cultivation and corresponded...

    £275