Europe

BERTOLONI, Antonio. Amoenitates Italicae sistentes opuscula ad rem herbariam et zoologiam Italiae spectantia.
Bologna, Annesio Nobili, 1819. 4to. With 6 engraved plates. Contemporary blue paper wrappers. [6], 472 pp. Full description

[BESNARD, Thomas Pope]. A voice from the bush in Australia: shewing its present state, advantages, and capabilities, in a series of letters from an Irish settler and others in New South Wales. With appendices ...
Dublin, William Curry junior & Co.; London, Smith, Elder & Co.; Edinburgh, John Johnstone, 1839. 12mo. With wood-engraved frontispiece, nearly full-page wood-engraved illustration on page 25 and a letterpress folding table. Modern marbled wrappers. 108 pp. Full description

BETZKY (BETSKOI), Ivan Ivanovitch. Les plans et les statuts, des différents établissements ordonnés par sa Majésté Impériale Catherine II. pour l'education de la jeunesse, et l'utilité générale de son Empire.
Amsterdam, Marc-Michel Rey, 1775. 2 volumes bound as 1. 4to. With 2 engraved allegorical frontispieces, engraved allegorical plate, 3 large folding engraved plans, 4 folding tables, and 64 large engraved head-pieces, tail-pieces and allegorical engravings in text, including the coat of arms, medal and seal of Catherine the Great of Russia. Contemporary tree calf, rebacked with gold-tooled spine. VI, [2], 160, 42, [2]; 160 pp. Full description

[BIANCONI, Giovanni Lodovico]. Lettere al marchese Filippo Hercolani ... sopra alcune particolarita della Baveria, ed altri paesi della Germania.
Lucca, Giovanni Riccomini, 1763. 8vo. Contemporary Italian marbled paper over flexible paperboards. XVI, 272 pp. Full description

[BINDING]. [GHELARDI SCOLOPI, Orazio Antonio]. La pace tra la virtu', la gloria, ed amore. Componimento drammatico da cantarsi in occasione delle faustissime nozze del nobil uomo signor Silvestro Michele Arnolfini con la nobil donzella signora Beatrice Luisa Bernardini dedicato alla medesima.
Lucca, Giuseppe Rocchi, 1767. Small 4to (17 x 14 cm). Contemporary red velvet, embroidered with silver and gold thread and white and yellow silk (each board with an emblematic image: a crowned mirror[?] showing a hand planting a flag, perhaps intended as the groom's hand on the front and the bride's hand on the back), sewn without supports through 3 holes, brocade paper endpapers (grape vines and large flowers, white on a copper background), green silk ribbon marker. 24 pp. Full description

[BINDO GUERRI of Siena] with a prologue by Antonius de RAMPIGOLLIS. Reportatorium Biblie aureum [= Biblia aurea].
[Augsburg], [printing office of the Abbey of Saints Ulrich and Afra], [in the period 1473 to early 1475]. Chancery (Foolscap) folio (28 x 22 cm). With the title in a note following the prologue, at the foot of the first page (and abbreviated at the end of the book), a 2-page alphabetical table of contents and the main text comprising 139 entries.
Burgundy goatskin morocco (ca. 1890?). With the armorial bookplate of Robert Proctor. [231], [1 blank] pp. Full description

BLACKWELL, Thomas Eden. [Sketchbook containing several sketches of India, Burma and Switzerland, with an emphasis on their cultures].
[Various places, ca. 1826-1830]. Oblong 4to. With 66 sketches in pen & ink and pencil, mostly signed by Blackwell, mounted and bound in, with manuscript captions. There is also 1 print (ca. 1795/1800?) drawn by Singey Bey and engraved by Thomas Medland. Half black morocco, black decorated paper sides, gold-tooled ornaments on spine. [70] gray, white and blue album ll., containing 67 sketches and their accompanying manuscript captions and descriptions. Full description

BLAEU, Joan. Vyfde stuck der aerdrycksbeschryving, welck vervat Schotlandt en Yrlandt.
Amsterdam, Joan Blaeu, 1654. Atlas folio (57.5 x 39.5 cm). With engraved architectural title-page with the arms of Scotland filling the top half, elaborately crested, supported by unicorns with flags and still with the old Stuart royalist mottos, and 55 engraved maps (54 double-page and 1 of the Irish County Caterlogh, full-page), often richly adorned with additional cartouches with regional scenes, but most often with coats of arms from the region. Numerous woodcut tailpieces and decorated initial letters. The title-page and all maps, including the cartouches, scenes and coats of arms, beautifully coloured by hand and highlighted with gold. All maps in their first states, without added ships or compass roses. 17th-century Dutch gold-tooled vellum. [8], 189, [1 blank], 70, [1, 1 blank] pp. Full description

BLAEU, Joan. Grooten atlas, oft werelt-beschryving, in welcke t aerdryck, de zee, en hemel, wort vertoont en beschreven.
Amsterdam, Joan Blaeu, 1664-1665. 9 volumes. Imperial folio (55.5 × 36.5 cm). With 9 engraved title pages, an engraved frontispiece and 610 engraved maps, views, plans, etc., mostly double-page (53.5 × 64 cm, plate size ca. 42 × 53 cm), 7 larger folding, a few single-page and a few smaller, many including additional inset maps, plans and views, and decorated with coats of arms, human & mythological figures, animals, produce, etc. With the engraved title-pages, frontispiece, other engravings (except for the compass rose and 2 inscriptions), woodcut devices on 4 title-pages and 1 woodcut initial coloured by a contemporary hand (the maps mostly in outline but with their decorations fully coloured) and some (mostly the engraved title-pages) with extensive use of gold. Contemporary gold-tooled vellum. Full description

BLAEU, Willem Jansz. Zeespiegel, inhoudende een korte onderwijsinghe inde konst der zeevaert, en beschryvinghe der seen en kusten van de Oostersche, Noordsche, en Westersche schipvaert.Wt ondervindinghen van veel ervaren zeevaerders vergadert, en t'samen ghestelt.
Amsterdam, Willem Jansz. Blaeu, 1627. 3 parts in 1 volume, parts 2 and 3 consist of 6 books each. Folio. With 108 numbered engraved charts (1 folding, 104 double-page, 3 full-page), 2 half-page engraved charts, 2 volvelles, a woodcut vignette on the divisional title page of each part, and numerous woodcut illustrations in the text. Contemporary overlapping vellum, sewn on 5 supports laced through the joints, with the manuscript title (2x) and shelfmark ("15" and "32') on the spine. The work is preserved in a gold-tooled half red morocco clamshell box, with two green morocco title labels, lettered in gold, red buckram sides, and a green felt lining. [16], 64; 39, [1], 43, [1], 48, 32, 28, 24; 32, 52, 46, 43, [1], 40, 23, [1 blank] pp. Full description