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. DIONYSIUS of Halicarnassus.

    Antiquitatum Rom. libri XI. Ab Aemylio Porto recens & post aliorum interpretationes Latine redditi.

    Geneva, Jacob Stoer, 1614.

    A rare pocket-sized edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the early history of Rome, in an armorial binding for Adrien Poërier.

    £450

  2. [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

  3. NIXON, Howard M. 

    Broxbourne Library: Styles and Designs of Bookbindings from the twelfth to the twentieth Century … with an...

    London, Maggs Brothers for the Broxbourne Library, 1956. 

    First edition, one of three hundred copies, of Howard Nixon’s richly illustrated catalogue of the bindings in the library of Albert Ehrman.

    £875

  4. [WALLPAPER BINDING.]

    ‘Chassereau des Biens et Rentes deves a joseph Paul Roegier et marie margu te [sic] Bourdeau son espouse,...

    Hainaut, 1750–1773.

    A manuscript account book compiled by Joseph Paul Roegier and his son, recording receipts over a quarter-century, in an attractive and unusual binding reusing a large fragment of gilt leather wallpaper.

    £3500

  5. [ALMANACK.]

    étrennes mignones [sic], curieuses et utiles, pour l’année mil sept cent quatre-vingt-dix.

    Paris, [Jean-François-Hubert] Guillot, 1790.

    Very rare almanack for 1790, in a handsome contemporary binding of silk and sequins featuring lyres surmounted by hearts and torches, issued on the eve of the French Revolution with much material on the storming of the Bastille and revolts throughout France.

    £1950

  6. [ALMANACK.]

    Étrennes mignones [sic], curieuses et utiles, avec plusieurs augmentations & corrections, pour l’année mil sept...

    Paris, Claude-Jacques-Charles [Durand] and Pierre-François Durand, 1775.

    A very rare Parisian almanack for 1775, our copy in a handsome binding embroidered in gold and silver threads and with emblematic mottoes and charming illustrations depicting putti fanning smoke from a burning candle and holding a flaming heart.

    £1500

  7. [EMBROIDERED BINDING.]

    Etrennes mignonnes, pour l’an de grace de Notre Seigneur M. DCC. LIII. …

    Liège, Everard Kints, [1753].

    A charming almanack for 1753 printed in Liège by Everard Kints – bookseller, printer, and wine merchant – here in a delightful embroidered binding with raised work in silver thread surrounding a skilfully executed floral arrangement.

    £400

  8. CHALMERS, David.

    Histoire abbregee de tous les roys de France, Angleterre et Escosse, mise en ordre par forme d’Harmonie: contenant...

    Paris, Jean Fevrier, 1579.

    First edition of Chalmer’s historical work focusing on Scotland’s relations with France and England, written at a time of marriage negotiations between England and France, seeking to dispel the idea that England had any overlordship over Scotland.

    £950

  9. [BIBLE.]

    The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments … diligently compared and revised …

    Oxford, T. Wright and W. Gill, 1769.

    First quarto edition of the Oxford ‘standard’ Bible, as revised by Benjamin Blayney of Hertford College, Oxford (1728–1801), later Regius Professor of Hebrew. The quarto and folio editions of 1769, of which this was the first to be finished, were printed from the same setting of type differently...

    £5250

  10. LEVEY, Michael.

    The later Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen … second edition.

    Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

    Revised second edition of Levey’s catalogue of the later Italian paintings in the Royal Collection, from Carracci to Zuccarelli and including the largest group of Canalettos in the world, a specially bound duplicate of Elizabeth II’s presentation copy.

    £475

  11. PAPINI, Roberto.

    Le Arti d’Oggi: Architettura e Arti Decorative in Europa.

    Milan and Rome, Bestetti and Tumminelli, 1930.

    First edition of a thorough and extensively illustrated survey of architectural and artistic styles and artworks from across Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, preceded by the idea of a utopian town, ‘Universa’, where the futuristic ideal for a new society can be achieved and craftsmanship...

    £300

  12. [ALMANACK.]

    Les étrennes à la rose, ou le rosier d’amour.

    Paris, Janet, [1804?].

    A charming literary almanack, or ‘rosebush of love’, collecting amatory poems using the motif of the rose, here bound in red silk strikingly embroidered in silver and dated with the French Revolutionary year ‘An XII’ (1804).

    £2500

  13. [CRIMEAN WAR.]

    Les militaires chrétiens a la guerre d’orient. Récompenses annuelles.

    Versailles, Beau jeune, [1856].

    First and only edition, rare, of this unusual cartonnage giftbook history of the Crimean War.

    £375

  14. [ALMANACK.]

    Les perfidies supposées ou les médisances pardonables. Almanach orné des jolies gravures.

    Paris, Janet, ‘Successeur du Sr Jubert’, 1800.

    A seemingly unrecorded almanack for 1800, issued by the prolific publisher of almanacks Pierre-étienne Janet (1746–1830), with suggestive engravings accompanied by explanatory poems, songs, and music, our copy in a handsome binding of contemporary painted white sheep with designs of hearts, garlands,...

    £1450

  15. [ALMANACK.]

    L’Esprit des chansonniers, extrain [sic?] des meilleurs poëtes.

    Paris, Le Fuel, [1826?].

    A very rare enamelled metal binding with an enchanting design of birds and squirrels, from the collection of the bookbinder, collector, and bibliographer Léon Gruel.

    £2750

  16. [PSALMS.]

    Les Pseaumes de David, mis en Vers François, revus et approuvez par le Synode Walon des Provinces-Unies. Nouvelle Edition.

    Amsterdam, ‘aux dépens de l’Eglise Françoise de Londres’, 1729’.

    New edition of the metrical Psalms of the Pléiade poet Clément Marot and the theologian Théodore de Bèze, extensively revised, with a new version of 149 Psalms, printed for the use of Huguenot émigrés.

    £950

  17. ZACHARIÄ, Just Friedrich Wilhelm.

    Les quatre parties du jour, poëme traduit de l’allemand de M. Zacharie.

    Paris, J. B. G. Musier fils, 1769.

    First edition in French of this proto-Romantic poem on the times of day, splendidly bound with the arms of its dedicatee, the mentally ill Christian VII of Denmark and Norway.

    £1500

  18. MYERS, Robin, Michael HARRIS, and Giles MANDELBROTE (eds).

    Lives in Book History: Changing Contours of Research over...

    Leicester, Garendon Press, 2022.

    ‘This volume has grown out of one event in a long series of annual conferences on book-trade history – held to mark the fortieth conference in 2018. For this we had asked nine well-known book historians to give a retrospective review of their field, be it manuscripts, incunabula, book binding, and...

    £35

  19. [ALMANACK.]

    London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1785.

    [London,] Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1785].

    A very attractive miniature London Almanack in its elaborate original binding of gilt white calf and matching étui, with an engraving of the soon-to-be-finished Somerset House.

    £950

  20. PITOU, Louis-Ange.

    L’Urne des Stuarts et des Bourbons, ou le fond de ma conscience, sur les causes et les effets des vingt-un...

    Paris, [Beraud for] L.A. Pitou, 31 August 1815.

    First and only surviving edition of this account of executed royals from England and France by the royalist publisher and propagandist Louis-Ange Pitou (1767–1846), published on the return of Louis XVIII to Paris after the Hundred Days.

    £650