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. FREEMAN, Arthur.

    Historical Forgery in Romanophobe Britain: Robert Ware’s Irish Fictions revisited.

    London, 2021.

    A new and particular account of the anti-Catholic and anti-separatist forgeries of Robert Ware, the seventeenth-century Irish antiquary, who has been called ‘the most audacious fabricator of historical documents who ever lived’. Ware’s formidable output of lively if malicious fictions has...

    £20

  2. FREEMAN, Arthur.

    Bibliotheca Fictiva: a Collection of Books and Manuscripts Relating to Literary Forgery 400 BC – AD 2000.

    Quaritch, 2014.

    An inventory of books and manuscripts relating to literary forgery, complete with three supplements. Spanning some twenty-four centuries, the book seeks also to define and describe the controversial genre it represents. Individual entries offer specific commentary on the forgers and their work,...

    £100

  3. FUHRMANN, Ernst.

    China. Erster Teil: Das Land der Mitte.

    Hagen, Folkwang-Verlag, 1921.

    First edition of two of the most celebrated works on Chinese religious architecture, published as volumes IV and V of Geist, Kunst und Leben Asiens, with hundreds of pictures of temples and Buddhist sculptures, some of which are now lost. The second volume deals in particular with the Lingyan...

    £175

  4. GANF, Iulii Abramovich, and P. PISKUNOV, editor.

    Да здравствует конституция страны социализма!...

    Moscow, Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva, 1953.

    Typically Soviet poster illustrated by graphic artist Iuli Ganf, whose satirical work was published in magazines and newspapers such as Krokodil.

    £700

  5. GARGIULO, Raffaele.

    Cenni sulla maniera di rinvenire i vasi fittili Italo-Greci. Sulla loro costruzione, sulle loro fabbriche più...

    Naples, Tipografia Virgilio, 1843.

    Second, revised and enlarged edition (first 1831), illustrated with sixteen handsome engraved plates.

    £275

  6. GERVASIO, Agostino.

    Intorno alla iscrizione puteolana de’ Luccei osservazioni ...

    Naples, Stamperia Reale, 1851.

    First edition. Gervasio attempts a new interpretation of an ancient inscription discovered in Pozzuoli.

    £150

  7. GORDON, George Hamilton, Fourth Earl of Aberdeen.

    An Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture; with...

    London: Thomas Davison for John Murray, 1822.

    First separate edition. The scholar and politician Gordon (1784–1860) was educated at Harrow School and St John’s College, Cambridge, and succeeded to the earldom of Aberdeen in 1801. He undertook a Grand tour through Europe to the Levant in 1802-1804, travelling to Constantinople with William...

    £475

  8. GREEN, Benjamin.

    Figures & Heads from the Originals of Louthenbourg & Bossi …

    [London,] 1773.

    First edition, very rare, containing probably the earliest soft-ground etchings produced in England. A head of a monk after Benigno Bossi, dated 25 December 1771, is often referred to as the first dated soft-ground etching by an English artist (it is here in an early state, without lettering...

    £3250

  9. GROSSI, G. B. Gennaro.

    Le Belle Arti.

    Naples, dalla tipografia del Giornale Enciclopedico, 1820.

    First edition in book form, reprinted from the Giornale Enciclopedico di Napoli, with some additional material in an appendix to the second volume. The first volume is on the music and musicians of Naples, the second volume deals with Neapolitan painters up to the eighteenth century.

    £150

  10. GRÜNEISEN, C.

    Niclaus Manuel. Leben und Werke eines Malers und Dichters. Kriegers, Staatsmannes und Reformators im sechszehnten...

    Tubingen, Cotta, 1837.

    First edition of the first separate biography of the Bern painter and woodcutter Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch (1525-1571).

    £250

  11. HALL, Trevor H.

    The Winder sale of old conjuring books.

    Leeds, W. S. Maney & Son Ltd., 1975.

    First edition, number 52 of 250 copies, numbered and signed by the author, of this study of the public dispersal of the Leeds-based collector Roland Winder’s library of conjuring books. In his preface, Hall terms this pamphlet ‘a footnote to the chapter, ‘Libraries and Collectors,’ in [his earlier...

    £180

  12. HELMAN, Isidore-Stanislas-Henri.

    Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales Chinoises, dédiés à Madame,...

    Paris, chez l’auteur … et chez M. Ponce, [1788].

    Two handsome engraved works by the French engraver and printseller Helman (1743–1806/9), here on uncut sheets, the first depicting scenes from Chinese history, the second episodes in the life of Confucius (Kong Fuzi).

    £6000

  13. [HERALDRY.]

    Manuscripts relating to Low Countries nobility.

    [Low Countries, mid-17th century?].

    A fine set of manuscripts relating to Low Countries heraldry and history compiled by a learned local antiquary.

    £1500

  14. [HILLER, Johann Adam, editor].

    Anecdoten zur Lebensgeschichte berühmter französischer, deutscher, italienischer, holländischer...

    Leipzig, Lankisch, 1762.

    Scarce first edition of Hiller’s two-volume collection of literary, philosophical and historical anecdotes. The editor’s note at the end mentions the contemporary publication of a French work of similar inspiration, and states the editor’s intention to translate it and publish it as a sequel to...

    £175

  15. HOWITT, William.

    The rural and domestic life of Germany: with characteristic sketches of its cities and scenery, collected in a...

    London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1842

    A fine copy of the first edition of Howitt’s account of his travels in Germany and Austria, and one of the best books in English about German life at the time. Howitt had moved with his family to Heidelberg in 1840 and stayed in Germany for more than two years on account of the education of his older...

    £100

  16. JACOBSON, Ken.

    Odalisques & Arabesques: Orientalist Photography 1839–1925.

    [London], Quaritch, 2007.

    Profusely illustrated, this is the most comprehensive survey to date of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photography of the Middle East and North Africa. Using Orientalist painting as a counterpoint, it primarily relates the extraordinarily rich visual documentation of the peoples and cultures...

    £60

  17. [JOBERT, Louis, and Arcangelo AGOSTINI (translator).] 

    La scienza delle medaglie antiche e moderne.  Per ammaestramento...

    Venice, Lorenzo Baseggio, 1728. 

    First Italian translation of a synopsis of numismatic knowledge by the French Jesuit Louis Jobert (1637–1719), illustrated with eleven plates of coins.

    £450

  18. LABORDE, Ernest.

    Vieilles maisons boutiques & paysages de Paris. Eaux fortes originales de Ernest Laborde. Presentées par Gustave...

    Paris, Jules Meynial, 1918 [1919].

    First edition, very rare: two series of twenty etchings each on the most picturesque houses and shops in Paris, produced between 1911 and 1918 by Ernest Laborde (1870–1935).

    £1950

  19. [LABOURS OF THE MONTHS &c.] 

    Januarius.  Februarius.  Merz.  April … 

    Nuremberg, Joh. Andreae Endterische Handlung, [second half of eighteenth century]. 

    A scarce popular print depicting the labours of the months and signs of the zodiac, four continents, the four classical elements, and the four seasons. 

    £475

  20. LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.

    Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...

    Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.

    First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).

    £475