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RARE BIBLE EDUCATION BOOK FOR CHILDREN, WITH 269 ILLUSTRATIONS
[BIBLE - PRINT BIBLE]. KULENKAMP, Gerard. Bybelschat, of de Voornaamste Geschiedenissen van het Oude en Nieuwe Testament. Eerste [-twede] deel.
Amsterdam, Jacbous Loveringh, 1758.
WITH: SCHMIDT, Johann Jacob.
Kort Begrip der Bybelsche Geographie, of heilige aardrykskunde: ... Benevens een korte historische kronyk ...
Amsterdam, Jacbous Loveringh, 1762. 8vo. 2 volumes (with the 2nd work at the end of vol. 2). With 3 title-pages in red and black, an engraved allegorical frontispiece by J.C. Philips, 175 engraved illustrations in the text and 94 additional illustrations on 43 engraved plates, as published. Further with woodcut and built-up decorations. Contemporary mottled calf, gold-tooled spines (with morocco labels) and board edges, marbled edges.
| Orders and Information | € 2250 |
The most extensively illustrated issue (not recorded in the literature) of the rare first copperplate edition of Kulenkamp's Dutch Bible education book for children, enlarged and improved from the woodcut edition published in 1743 under the title Historische School- en Huis-Bybel. Kulenkamp wrote the preface included in both editions. It was published in two volumes, one covering the Old Testament and one covering the New Testament, and gives brief summaries of the Bible stories, followed by questions with extensive answers. The summary of biblical geography bound at the end of volume two, published four years later, was intended to supplement the Bybelschat, as the preliminaries note.
Although the present copy belonged to Wilco Poortman, it has more illustrations than any of the four issues noted in his description, which appears to be based on the information at the end of the publisher's note to the reader (pp. xli-xlii). The publisher notes five issues, however, saying he decided, due to the high cost of copperplate printing, to print two different versions, one with 175 illustrations in the text and one without illustrations in the text, and to also offer the printing that has no illustrations in the text with 124 (or on better paper with 240) illustrations on separate plates, arranged 2 to a plate. He also notes that 100 of the 124 separate illustrations are completely different from any of the 175 in the text, so that by combining them one can have 275 illustrations. This last comes closest to the present issue, which has 94 rather than 100 additional illustrations (and the last 12, showing the 12 minor prophets, appear on 2 plates). That this set of 94 is complete is shown by the publisher's own letterpress list (on a singleton leaf following fol. 2Z8, the last leaf of the book itself), which numbers them 1 to 94 and gives the pages they are to face. This list has a drop-title, "Lyst van 94 Figuren Extra, die in de Bybelschat, op klein Mediaan Papier met 175 konst indrukplaten, noch kunnen by of ingevoegt worden." All illustrations in the various issues are printed from some of the plates for the 300 illustrations that Loveringh published in the same year in Driehondert Schriftuurlyke Dichttafereelen. Perhaps the details of the sets of separate plates were not yet settled when Loveringh first published the Bybelschat, so that the announced 275 illustrations became in the event 269. The collation of the letterpress leaves has also caused confusion, because the last leaf of the preliminaries (following 6*2) is in fact A1, so that the main text begins on page 3 (fol. A2r). Although the following leaf is signed A3 and the leaf after it is by implication A4, these four leaves actually form two quires of 2 rather than one quire of 4.
With the bookplate of Wilco C. Poortman. A good copy, with slight browning and foxing and an occasional minor water stain, slightly affecting a couple plates. The binding is somewhat worn, with chips in the spines and cracked hinges. Rare complete copy of the most extensively illustrated issue of Kulenkamp's Bybelschat.
