[SCRAP ALBUM]. VISSCHER, J. (compiler or recipient).
[Ausschneidebilder].
[The Netherlands?], 28 January 1777 (some of the prints themselves: Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht, [ca. 1750?]). 4to. A scrap album containing about 330 cut-out images from engraved prints, most neatly and uniformly coloured by a contemporary hand (probably for the publisher or publishers). Contemporary half roan sheepskin, sewn on 2 vellum tapes, red-sprinkled paper sides, red-sprinkled edges, with a heart-shaped paper label on the front board with the manuscript inscription, "J. Visscher" above the date (1 above 28, flanked by "17 ... 77"). [1], 170, [1] ll. including integral paste-downs.
€ 7,500
A carefully and neatly assembled scrap album containing about 330 coloured, engraved images, each carefully cut out of a print (close to the people, animals, plants and objects depicted, so that the background in most images is entirely cut away). The images show people (including costume figures, caricatures and oriental figures), boats and ships, flowers, architectural views (including garden views, fountains and sculptures), theatre prints, birds, insects, Aesop illustrations and other items. They include a large image (nearly filling the quarto leaf) of a man on a ladder picking fruit from a tree, and a whaling scene with a man harpooning a spouting whale. The heart-shaped label with the name J. Visscher and date 28 January 1777, suggests that the album was assembled for Visschers betrothal or marriage on that date. This is supported by the final cut-out (nearly filling the paste-down at the end), which shows a well-dressed man sitting on a barrel (left, perhaps a merchant) and a standing woman (right) with a grape vine full of ripe grapes growing up between them. He holds the vine with his left hand and she with her right.
Buijnsters notes that 18th-century scrapbooks such as the present are very rare, though he notes a Dutch print from ca. 1703/08 where the publishers (Jacobus and Jan Bouman) encourage people to clip out the images and paste them on red paper.
From the collection of Piet Buijnsters & Leontine Smets, with the Buijnsters-Smets bookplate. In the last image (the man and woman with a grape vine), the mans right arm and the womans right hand have been lost, but the album leaves and engraved cut-outs are otherwise in very good condition. The binding is slightly rubbed but still good. A 1777 album of about 330 coloured engraved images, apparently assembled to commemorate a marriage. Piet J. Buijnsters, "Het Nederlandse 'scrapbook' 1775-1900", in: Antiek XXXI, pp. 50-58, at p. 52 (& figs. 1, 2 & 5, the last incorrectly described as from a 19th-century album); WorldCat (2 albums of Engelbrechts "Aufschneidebilder", plus his peepshows and other sets of his images); for Engelbrechts peepshows and privilege: B.M. Stafford & F. Terpak, Devices of wonder, p. 336.
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