[COSTUMES - CARNIVAL].
Taschenbuch für das Carneval. Erstes Jahr. - Le carnaval ou representation d'une collection d'habits de masques. L'an premier.
Leipzig, Friedrich August Leo, 1804. 16mo? (14 x10.5 cm). With 12 numbered engraved plates by Friedrich Wilhelm Nettling, all coloured by a contemporary hand. Original publisher's paperboards, printed from an engraved plate and hand-coloured. 31, [1 blank] pp.
€ 4,500
Very rare, first and only published part of a series of hand-coloured carnival costume plates, each of the 12 with a letterpress description in German and French. Only plates 9 and 10 bear the name of the German draughtsman and engraver Friedrich Wilhelm Nettling, best known for his portrait of Bach, but all may have been engraved by him. The mostly comical or farcical plates illustrate a fairy with her entourage, a Chinese man, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a group of beast people and many other extraordinary figures. Two figures in one plate wear funnels as hats, like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. Besides the 12 plates in the booklet itself, the engravings on the boards show two male figures (gymnasts?, one in a clown-like costume) on the front and a dancing woman with a tambourine on the back.
With some minor stains and the front of the binding slightly damaged in the lower margin and lower right corner, spine cracked. Good copy. Baumgärtel, Die Almanache, Kalender und Taschenbücher 1750-1860 der Landesbibliothek Coburg, p. 32; Köhring 111; WorldCat (3 copies).
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