Book History, Education, Learning & Printing / Bindings

[SAINCTOT, Nicolas II de]. [Memoires de Mr. de Sainctot].
[Paris?, ca. 1710]. 2 works, with the first in 2 parts, in 2 volumes. Folio (44 x 30 cm). With 3 drawings of layouts and seating plans of the king's audience room, and 24 copper-engravings of ambassadors and court scenes. With: (2) [AVICE, Henry]. La pompeuse et magnifique ceremonie du sacre du roy Louis XIV.
Paris, Imprimerie d'Edme Martin, 1655.
Contemporary gold-tooled red morocco, with the French royal coat-of-arms on the front and back, fleurs-de-lis in the corners and on the spine, the title lettered in gold on the spine, gold-tooled board edges and turn-ins, gilt and marbled edges, marbled endpapers. 450, [1 blank]; [6], "344" [= 407], [5 blank]; [1], [1 blank], [8], [7], [5 blank] pp. Full description

SAVARY, (Nicolas) Claude Étienne. Brieven over Egypte.
Amsterdam, Martinus de Bruyn, 1788-1789. 3 volumes. 8vo. With 4 numbered engraved folding plates, including maps of Egypt and northern Egypt, a plan of Alexandria, and a cross-section of the Great pyramid. Contemporary mottled calf, richly gold-tooled spines and binding edges. XVI, 446, [1], [1 blank]; XVI, 364, [2 blank], [1], [1 blank]; “XIV” [=XXIV], 390, [1], [1 blank] pp. Full description

SIMPLICIUS of Cilicia. Commentarius in Enchiridion Epicteti, ex libris veteribus emendatus. Cum versione Hieronymi Wolfii, et Cl. Salmasii animadversionibus, et notis quibus Philosophia Stoica passim explicatur & illustratur.
Leiden, Johannes Maire, 1640. 4 parts in 1 volume. 4to. With three title-pages. Set in roman, Greek and Arabic types. Contemporary French pointillé binding in the style of "Le Gascon", richly gold-tooled in concentric panels on both covers, and in the six compartments of the spine, the second with the title. [20], 332, [12]; [1], [1 blank], 329, [23]; [34], 88, 15 pp. Full description

STANLEY, Edward. A familiar history of birds.
London, Longmans, Green and Co. (at the end: printed by Spottiswoode and Co.), 1865. 8vo. With engraved frontispiece, title-vignette, 2 engraved plates and 102 illustrations in the text.Contemporary gold-tooled calf, probably a school prize binding, with "King Edward's School Bruton" and its "Sealle of the Skolle of Brew" in a frame, the seal showing a Brewers tonne (Brew-ton), richly gold-tooled spine with a red morocco label, edges gilt over a fore-edge painting showing a falconry hunting scene. xiii, [1 blank], 446 pp. Full description

STRAAT, Pieter. D'Oranjeboom verheerlykt [above:] Geslachtboom van de huizen van Oranje en van Nassau, ...
(Colophon: Amsterdam, Hendrik de Leth), [1747]. 4to. With an engraved armorial title-page by Hendrik de Leth, with the subtitle in a banderol at the head, a crowned tree representing the family tree of the houses of Orange and Nassau (with 27 family coats of arms), a wreath with an orange tree, the 7 arms of the Dutch provinces and military attributes, the whole beautifully hand-coloured as published. Contemporary gold-tooled calf, by the Van Damme bindery in Amsterdam, each board in a panel design with a figure of Athena as centre-piece, 2 urns with flames and 2 (pommegranate?) flowers as cornerpieces for the inner border, larger pommegranate cornerpieces for the next border, the whole in a third border (withflower and pommegranate roll), a rosette and fillets in each of the spine compartments, gold-tooled board edges, gilt edges, marbled endpapers. Engraved title-page plus [17], [1 blank] pp. Full description

SZYMANSKI, Félix. Essai sur la guerre dans le Soudan.
Lyon, Imprimerie Mougin-Rusand, 1888. Large 8vo (24.5 x 16 cm). With 2 large folding chromolithographed maps (50 x 60 cm; map images 44 x 58 cm; scale 1: 1,000,000), 4 wood-engraved illustrations in the text and 3 original photographic albumen prints (10.5 x 13 cm) mounted on paperboard plates. Contemporary gold-tooled, black goatskin morocco (signed at the foot of the front turn-in by Lucien Magnin in Lyon), richly gold-tooled spine, richly gold-tooled turn-ins, double fillets on board edges, gilt edges. [4], 184 pp. Full description

TAGORE, Sourindro Mohun. Fifty tunes, composed and set to music.
Kolkata (Calcutta), published by the author, printed by I.C. Bose & Co., 1878. 4to. With a wood-engraved title-vignette depicting instruments and the author's initials. With each page in a decorative letterpress border, with the music rendered in Western letterpress musical notation with built-up notes. Printed on wove paper. Contemporary gold-tooled green sheepskin, made in Calcutta for the author, probably for presentation, the front board with the author's family crest and motto (the Hindu god Vishnu in a sunburst with a motto in Bengali: "always be truthful"). [8], 57, [2] pp. Full description

TAGORE, Sourindro Mohun (Saurindra Mohana THAKURA). A few specimens of Indian songs.
Calcutta (Kolkata), published by the author, printed by I.C. Bose & Co. (The Stanhope Press), 1879. Royal 8vo (23.5 x 15 cm). Set in Devanagari (for Sanskrit and Hindi), Bengali (for Bengali) and roman types with incidental italic and textura gothic. The present copy has the dedication leaf for Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, printed in blue with an elaborate red border built up from typographic ornaments. Contemporary gold-tooled green sheepskin, made in Calcutta for the author, probably for presentation, each board with a decorative roll outer border, a thick-thin inner border with 4 large waterlily cornerpieces, the front board with the author's family crest and motto, the back board with an ornamental centrepiece, title in the 2nd of 5 fields on the spine, the others with decorations, gold-tooled board edges and turn-ins, gilt edges. [1], [1 blank], [1], [1 blank], 113, [1 blank] pp. Full description

[TELESFORO DA COSENZA]. Livre merveilleux, contenant en bref la fleur et substance de plusieurs traittez, tant des propheties & revelations, qu'anciennes croniques, faisant mention de tous les faictz de l'Eglise Universelle, co[m]me des scismes, discords & tribulations advenir en l'Eglise de Rome, & d'un temps auquel on ostera & tollira aux ge[n]s d'eglise & clergé, ...
Paris, Thibault Bessault, 1565. 8vo. With Bessault's woodcut device on the title-page. 18th-century French grained red morocco (ca. 1745?), gold-tooled spine with pointillé ornaments, each board framed with thin-thick-thin fillets with a rosette(?) stamped over their intersections at the corners, gold-tooled turn-ins, gold fillets on the board edges, gilt edges. [54] ll. Full description

[TEYSSIER des FARGES, George Aimé]. TOUCHSTONE, S.F. (pseudonym). Les chevaux de course[:] pedigree - description - historique. 60 portraits en couleur par V.-J. Cotlison, L. Pénicault et Le Nail. Texte orné de 182 vignettes ... = Historique des étalons pur-sang Anglais et Français et des juments Françaises les plus célèbres ayant paru sur le turf de 1764 à 1887.
Paris, J. Rothschild, 1889. Oblong folio (24.5 x 37 cm). With 2 title-pages in red and black, each with a different vignette; 60 chromolithographed plates, highlighted with gum arabic and lithographed by Thurwanger, each facing an inserted letterpress leaf with a pedigree of the horse portrayed. Further with 182 lithographed vignettes in the text. Contemporary gold- and blind-blocked brown morocco, with the original publisher's front wrapper (lithographed and hand-coloured) mounted on the front board in a wide decorated gold frame, gold-tooled turn-ins, gilt edges, white glazed endpapers with a watered-silk pattern, signed on the front board, "A SOUZE A. LENEGRE REL.", meaning Auguste Souze and Antoine Lenègre the younger in Paris. XXV, [1 blank], 165, [1 blank] pp. Full description