Art, Architecture & Photography

[BOTANICAL MANUSCRIPT - FRIAR LUC DAVID]. [Drop title:] Traite des plantes universelles par figures au naturel par le frere Luc david Recollet, chirrugien oculiste ...
[France], 1742. Large folio (ca. 45 x 28 cm). With 423 botanical drawings in bright watercolour. Manuscript with French text (including Latin names of the depicted plants), written in an 18th-century cursive hand. Most leaves contain a "Strasbourg bend" watermark: a fleur-de-lis above a shield with a diagonal band and the countermark "L Laroche" (identical to Heawood 65, but erroneously listed by him as "I Laroche", date: 1718-1721). The French papermaker Léonard Laroche (1646-1721) was active in the French province of Angoumois (now Charente) in the period 1673-1721.
Contemporary vellum, later endpapers. [2], 423, [1 blank], [19] ll. Full description

[BOTANY - DRAWING]. [Various flowers. (On verso): a sketch of a grape branch with grapes and leaves].
[Netherlands, 17th century]. Drawings (48.8 x 28.9-29.2 cm). Black chalk drawings, occasionally heightened with white chalk, including some light brown watercolours, on grey 17th-century handmade paper without watermark. In manuscript 'Martagon' in brown ink. In lower right corner in manuscript the number "3" in ink. Framed. Full description

[BOTTLE IN BOOK FORM]. Esprit de Francklin ... Le B[on].homme Richard.
Chalonnes sur Loire, Fremy frères, Bottrel et Cie., [ca. 1830]. Blown glass bottle made in the form of a book (15 x 10 x 3 cm plus 1.5 cm neck and lip). The "spine" is covered with gold-tooled red morocco, with 7 horizontal rolls dividing it into 5 fields plus a smaller 6th at the foot, the title and the French form of Franklin's pen-name in fields 3 and 4 and a decoration in fields 1, 3 and 5, the "boards" covered with paper, each with an lithographed rectangular decorative border enclosing an oval laurel wreath around an oval paper overlay with a lithographed view, that on the front board showing Benjamin Franklin and that on the back board showing a man in the distillery, each with accompanying texts above and below the wreath. The paper sides (but not their overlays) have a slight reddish cast. Full description

BOUCHER, François. Receuil de fontaines inventées par ...
With: Second livre de fontaines inventées par ...
Paris, Gabriel Huquier, [1736]. 2 parts in 1 volume. Royal 4to (32 x 24 cm). With 2 series of 7 finely etched and engraved plates of water fountains, including 2 title-prints, the first series with only the names of the artist François Boucher and publisher Gabriel Huquier, the second also with the name of its engraver Pierre(-Alexandre?) Aveline. 19th-century gold-tooled dark mottled sheepskin, gilt edges. 7, 7 engraved ll. Full description

BOUDARD, Jean-Baptiste. Iconologie tirée de divers auteurs. Ouvrage utile aux gens de lettres, aux pöetes, aux artistes, & généralement à tous les amateurs des beaux-arts.
Vienna, Johan Thomas von Trattner, 1766.
3 volumes. 8vo. With Trattners engraved device on the 3 title-pages. Contemporary half calf. [16], 203, [8]; [2], 219, [8]; [2], 208, [12] pp. Full description

BRADLEY, Richard. Nouvelles observations physiques et pratiques sur le jardinage et l'art de planter, avec le calendrier des jardiniers. Ouvrage traduit de l'Anglois de Bradley, enrichi de figures en taille-douce.
Paris, Pierre-Aug. Paulus du Mesnil, Jean-Luc Nyon, & Siméon-Prosper Hardy (colophons: printing offices of Moreau (vol. II) and Aug. Mart. Lottin (vol. III)), 1756. 3 volumes. 12mo. Engraved frontispiece depicting the gardens of a country estate, and 12 numbered folding engraved plates by Pierre-François Legrand, showing all kinds of flowers, garden lay-outs, insects etc., including 3 very interesting plates of a greenhouse (plan, interior and exterior views) in vol. 3 Contemporary mottled tanned sheepskin. frontispiece plus XXXVI, 358, [2]: [4 blank?], [5], X-XVI, 510, [2 blank]; [2], 12, "442"[=440] pp. Full description

[DRAWING]. BRANDS, Eugène. [Two manuscript invitations for an exhibition opening, each including an original drawing in colour].
[Amsterdam, 1948]. Each 14.7 x 11 cm. Pen-and-ink drawings; one with blue watercolour and the other with blue and yellow watercolour. 2 pp. Full description

BRETEZ, Louis. La perspective pratique de l'architecture. Contenant par leçons une manière nouvelle, courte et aisée pour représenter en perspective les ordonnances d'architecture & les places fortifiées.
Paris, Charles Antoine Jombert, 1751. Folio. With an engraved frontispiece, and 59 full page engraved plates (52 numbered, 5 unnumbered, 2 with text). Contemporary gold tooled mottled brown calf, red edges, marbled end papers. [2] ll. + 60 plates. Full description

BRETON DE LA MARTINIÈRE, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph. La Russie, ou moeurs, usages, et costumes des habitans de toutes les provinces de cet empire.
Paris, Nepveu, 1813. 6 volumes. 12mo or 18mo. With 111 mostly engraved plates (4 folding facing title-pages of volumes 1-4). Contemporary half calf, gilt spine, uniformly bound. Full description

BRIL, Matthaeus. Topographia variarum regionum, inventa à Mathaeo Bril, aeri incisa à Simone Frisio. Ab C.J. Visscherio excusa.
[Amsterdam], Claes Jansz. Visscher, 1651. Oblong 8vo. Engraved title-print, and 24 engraved topographic views numbered 1-25 (11 x 16 cm; plate size 10 x 15.5 cm). Half green cloth (1840s?), green paper sides made from waste paper with a mirror image letterpress text (showing through from the underside or offset?), difficult to read but probably in French, with a heading in fat-face roman capitals, plain paper label with manuscript title in ink on front board. 25 engraved ll. Full description