
INVENTIONS / TECHNOLOGY
[
]
New
Chemistry, Practical
Applications — Illustrations
(“Arts”
in Science). Berthollet, Claude- Louis, & Amédée
B. Berthollet. Elements of the art of dyeing; with a description of
the art of bleaching by oxymuriatic acid. London: Pr. for Thomas Tegg; Simpkin
& Marshall; R. Griffin & Co., Glasgow; & J. Cumming, Dublin, 1824.
8vo (23.2 cm; 9.125"). 2 vols. I: xxvii, [1(blank)], 408 pp., 7 plts. (2 fold.).
II: vii, [1 (blank), 453 pp., 2 fold. plts.
$500.00
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C.-L. Berthollet was a member of the circle of Lavoisier and helped in the development of a chemical nomenclature that was applicable and derived from the chemistry being developed at the end of the 18th century. The present work is a systematic study and scientific discussion of the nature of dyeing, with nine plates, four folding.
Posthumous second edition in English, “translated from the French, with notes and engravings, illustrative and supplementary, by Andrew Ure.”
Uncut, partially unopened copy.
Uncut, partially unopened copy. Publisher's quarter cloth with paper covered boards; some discoloration to cloth, light chipping to board edges. Ex–social club library: paper label at top of spine, 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. A clean copy with the plates good and crisp; as noted above, an uncut, partially unopened copy. (27388)

The Middle Period of
American Textile Manufacture — A “How To”
Baldwin, Amos A. The loom-fixers' manual. Containing rules and instructions for setting up and operating the Crompton, and the Knowles looms; the production of cloth on cam looms; spreading the warp threads in the process of weaving; and other valuable information to loom-fixers, weavers, and all others interested in weaving. Brasher Falls, NY: A.A. Baldwin, 1883. 12mo (16.5 cm; 6.5"). 102 pp., [5 (ads)] ff., illus.
[SOLD]
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Below Baldwin's wood-engraved frontispiece portrait is the information that he was a “textile designer, and publisher of textile works.” His portrait shows him wearing the emblem of the Order of Masons. Later in life he was a justice of the peace in Brasher Falls.
The volume is illustrated with in-text wood engravings; the errata slip is present. The ads include a two-page spread for “Knowles' Open Shed Broad Fancy Loom” with a full-page illustration of the machine. Other pages are devoted to Baldwin's publications and supplies.
Provenance: Pencil signature on front fly-leaf of “Samuel Butterworth, Gloucester City, New Jersey, 1884.”
Searches of WorldCat and NUC locate only two copies.
Publisher's very dark green cloth, front cover stamped in gilt with title; front hinge (inside) cracked but board holding strongly. A very good, clean copy. (35464)

Interesting
& Illustrated — Metallurgy
/ FIREWORKS!
Biringucci, Vannoccio. The pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio. New York: Basic Books, 1959. Small folio. 477 pp.
$60.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
Reprinting of the 1942 edition produced by the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, which was a complete translation of Biringuccio's Venice,1540 work on metallurgy and fireworks. The translation is by Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi and includes copies of the original woodcut illustrations. Smith and Gnudi added historical notes, bibliography, and an introduction. This edition contains a new introduction by Smith.
One of the “Collector's Series in Science” publications.
Publisher's quarter cloth. In original slipcase, which is sunned
(and pictured above). Very Good condition. (22449)
Carpet-Making —Four Plates
Duhamel du Monceau, [Henry Louis]. Art de faire les tapis, façon de Turquie, connus sous le nom de tapis de la Savonnerie. [Paris: De l’imprimerie de L.F. Delatour], 1766. Folio (46 cm, 18"). [1] f., 25, [1 (blank)] pp.; 4 plts.
$350.00
First edition of this stand-alone entry from the Description des arts et métiers, faites ou approuvées par Messieurs de l’Académie des sciences de Paris, a series of publications on French arts and trades sponsored by the Académie Royale des Sciences. Based on the papers of Jacques Noinville, former director of the famed Savonnerie carpet factory, the work describes the history and techniques of making Oriental-style rugs; the plates depict workers using looms and devices resembling spinning wheels, as well as individual pieces of equipment and a sample floral design.
19th-century quarter sheep over paper-covered boards, worn and abraded with small discolorations; spine leather chipped, with remnants of gilt-stamped leather title label. Edges untrimmed. Some offsetting and a very few spots to pages; small area of worm damage in upper margins. (5107)

“Pull Out of Bate, Allow to Drain a Little & Throw into Pickel”
MANUSCRIPT TRADE SECRETS
Endicott-Johnson Company. Manuscript on paper, in English. Formula book for shoe hide preparation. Endicott, Johnson City, NY: 1924–25. Various sizes (12mo to folio). Bound volume and 10 single sheets (74 pp. used).
$550.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Shoe manufactury was the Endicott-Johnson Company's business and it did well until market forces, especially foreign factories with cheap labor, caused an international upheaval, not just in shoe factories, but all U.S. manufacturing. Its longtime embrace of a particular version of welfare capitalism that it called the “Square Deal” makes it an interesting corporate case study.
This manuscript book offers detailed descriptions of leather preparation techniques and dye formulas as scattered throughout the volume on a total of 74 pages. Also recorded here are charts indicating numbers of hides dyed, as well as which colors were produced on which days. The colors of the 1920s are less common today and their names and details will convey a great deal to fashion historians: Muskox, Esquimo, Velour, Coffee Elk, and Box Brownstone, to list a few.
Needless to say the dye color formulae were proprietary and consequently copies of them rare.
The loose leaves are not excised from the book but are a mix of internal company documents and communications received from suppliers.
Provenance: John Donnelly, whose name appears at the top of two loose leaf of technical tables laid in the bound volume.
An important, suggestive resource for 1920s fashion research, industrial chemistry of the period, and American shoe manufacturing.
A stationer's blank book with lined paper; boards covered with a faux leather that is separating from them; good condition. The ten separate leaves have been removed from volume and are housed separately in a Mylar sleeve. (35989)
(English Political Satire PLUS). Venus attiring the graces. London: J. Dodsley, 1777. 4to (24.8 cm, 9.75"). 11, [1 (blank)] pp. [with] [Mason, William?] [Ode to Mr. Pinchbeck, upon his newly invented patent candle-snuffers. London: J. Almon, 1776]. [5]–11, [1 (adv.)] pp.
$385.00
Satiric verse mocking fashionable English dress, accompanied by a political satire addressed to Christopher Pinchbeck which includes the lines “Haste then, and quash the hot Turmoil, / That flames in
Boston’s angry Soil . . .” The first work is here in its first edition, while the second is likely an early printing.
Venus: ESTC T73277; Ode: ESTC T41985 (first ed.). Recent marbled paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Second work lacking half-title and title-page. Inner margins of two leaves reinforced; last line of advertising page shaved. Title-page and last few leaves with moderate foxing; one page (not the title) stamped by a now-defunct institution, with some offsetting to opposing page. (5875)

Witty, Moderately Filthy, & Scarce
Harington, John. The metamorphosis of Ajax; a cloacinean satire: With the Anatomy and apology ... To which is added, Ulysses upon Ajax. Chiswick: C. Whittingham, 1814. 8vo (19.5 cm, 7.7"). Frontis., xv, [1], xx, [4], 135, [1], 21, [1], 62, [4], 70, [2] pp.; illus., music.
[SOLD]
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Whittingham printing of this 1596 Rabelaisian satire, in which Sir John Harington describes inventing a flush toilet, resulting in much scatalogical humor as well as sly allusions to members of and events in Queen Elizabeth's court. The work was a mild scandal in its day and earned the wrath of the queen, although only temporarily — Harington, one of her godsons, fell in and out of favor with her several times before her death.
The volume, which includes Harington's two follow-ups to the original piece, features
a fine array of appurtenances including an engraved frontispiece portrait of the author, a song with sheet music provided (“O tu qui dans oracula”), a reproduction of the original woodcut illustration of a devil appearing to an aged man in the midst of doing his business, diagrams of the new privy both in parts and assembled, etc. Each section has a facsimile title-page based on originals of 1596.
Edition of only 100 copies.
Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.
Bibliotheca Osleriana 4907; Brunet, III, 43; Garrison & Morton 1594; NSTC H564; NCBEL, I, 1113. Not in Ing, Charles Whittingham: Printer, 1795-1876. 19th-century half brown calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and gilt-ruled bands and compartments, leather edges ruled in blind; binding lightly rubbed overall, somewhat more so along joints. Front fly-leaf with pencilled annotations and affixed slip of old cataloguing. Fore-edges untrimmed.
A clean, attractive copy. (38229)

More than One Lifetime's Worth of Adventure & Interesting Ideas
Harriott, John. Struggles through life, exemplified in the various travels and adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, of John Harriott, Esq. London: Pr. for the author, 1815. 12mo (18 cm, 7.1"). 3 vols. I: Frontis., xvxv, [1], 443, [1] pp. II: xii, 428, [2] pp. III: vii, [1], 479, [1] pp. (lacking pp. 69–72); 1 fold. plt., 1 plt.
$750.00
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Autobiography of
one
of the founders of the Thames police, a clever and independent
mariner who went adventuring around the world before settling down to become
an Essex justice of the peace and eventually Resident Magistrate of the Thames
River Police (a.k.a. the Marine Police Force, sometimes called England's
first official police force). Here he looks back on his remarkably varied youthful
escapades, including travelling in the merchant-service, visiting “the
Savages in North America,” meeting the King of Denmark, serving in the
East India Company's military service, and narrowly escaping such dangers as
tigers, poisonous snakes, floods, fires, and scamming fathers-in-law. If the
narrator is to be believed, the two issues that caused him the chiefest distress
in life were pecuniary difficulties and other people's unchivalrous treatment
of women. He also has much to say about law and business in the New World and
the Old, slavery in America, forcible incarceration in private madhouses (with
excerpts from a first-person account of such), and the nature of farming in
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, as well as the state of affairs in Washington,
DC, and, of course, the history of the creation of the Thames police.
Vol. I opens with a steel-engraved portrait of the author, done by Henry
Cook after Hervé; vol. III is illustrated with an
oversized,
folding plate of a water-engine intended for millwork, devised
by the author, and a plate of another of
his
inventions, the automated
“chamber fire escape”, which enables anyone to lower him- or herself
from a high window. This is the third edition, following the first of 1807.
NSTC H625; Sabin 30461. Contemporary speckled sheep,
spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels; vol. I with joints and extremities
refurbished, vols. II and III with spines and edges rubbed, old strips of
library tape reinforcing spine heads. Ex–social club library: 19th-century
bookplates, call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages, vols.
II and III with paper shelving labels at top of spines (vol. I showing signs
of now-absent label). Vol. I title-page with offsetting from frontispiece;
vol. III with pp. 69–72 excised (two leaves of a rather long religious-themed
letter from Harriott to his son) and with upper portion of one leaf crumpled,
reinforced some time ago. Some light age-toning, intermittent small spots
of foxing and ink-staining, pages generally clean.
Utterly
absorbing. (30651)
Henderson, William M. Patent No. 53,613: Improvement in steam engines. [Washington, D.C.: United States Patent Office, 1866]. Folio (appr. 50 × 27 cm, 20" × 14.5"). [4] ff.
[SOLD]
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Patent granted to William M. Henderson of Philadelphia for “improvements in the mode of constructing and operating direct-action independent steam engines.” F. [1] is the patent itself on an engraved form, with the hand signature of Secretary of the Interior W.I. Otto; f. [2] is a drawing, with some coloring in blue and red, of the device as improved upon, and [3–4] is Henderson’s official description of it.
Laced together with a silk ribbon. Some small spots of browning on drawing and elsewhere adjacent to ribbon; a little soiling exterior and along edges; and a few tiny tears in edges. (8636)
Henderson, William M. Patent No. 38308: Improvement in pumps. [Washington, D.C.: United States Patent Office, 1863]. Folio (appr. 50 × 27 cm, 20" × 14.5"). [3] ff.
$150.00
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Patent granted to William M. Henderson of Baltimore for improvements in “double action suction and force pumps.” F. [1] is the patent itself on an engraved form, with the hand signature of Secretary of the Interior I.P. Usher; f. [2] is a drawing of the device as improved upon, and [3] is Henderson’s official description of it.
Laced together with a silk ribbon. Some foxing, especially on drawing; soiling on exterior fold with traces elsewhere; and spotting to ribbon and wafer. (8638)
Henderson, William M. Patent No. 65,911: Improvement in steam pumps. [Washington, D.C.: United States Patent Office, 1867]. Folio (appr. 40 × 28 cm, 15.75" × 11"). [3], [1 (blank)] ff.
$150.00
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Patent granted to William M. Henderson of Philadelphia for “improvements in the mode of constructing and operating direct-action independent steam engines.” F. [1] is the patent itself on an engraved form, with the hand signature of acting Secretary of the Interior W.I. Otto; f. [2] is a drawing, with some coloring in blue and red, of the device as improved upon, and f. [3] is Henderson’s official description of it.
Laced together with a silk ribbon. Some browning, especially adjacent to ribbon and wafer; and a few tiny tears in edges. Short closed tears along the folds, without loss. (8635)
Henderson, William M. Patent No. 105,941: Improvement in direct-acting compound engine]. [Washington, D.C.: United States Patent Office, 1870. Folio (appr. 37 × 25 cm, 14.5" × 10"). [2], 2, [1 (blank)] ff.
$150.00
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Patent granted to William M. Henderson of Philadelphia for “improvement in direct-acting compound engine.” F. [1] is the patent itself on an engraved form, with the hand signature of acting Secretary of the Interior W.I. Otto; f. [2] is a drawing of the device as improved upon, and the following 2 ff. are Henderson’s official description of it.
Laced together with a silk ribbon. Some browning, especially adjacent to ribbon and wafer. (8634)

Making America's
Drawbridges BETTER
Herschel, Clemens. Continuous, revolving drawbridges: the principles of their construction and the calculation of the strains in them. With more especial reference to the designing of continuous panel girders of this description. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1875. 8vo (24 cm; 8.5"). 54 pp., x leaves of plates (9 fold.). Illus.
$150.00
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“This little book, in its original shape, was a paper written for the American Society of Civil Engineers” (preface). Very much a technical work of importance for bridge engineers as attested to by its provenance (see below), this book addresses the dramatic innovations in American drawbridge engineering that began at the end of the 1860s. The text is illustrated with 19 in-text wood-engraved cuts and
10 “heliotype” plates at the rear.
Throughout the text are lengthy mathematical proofs and calculations, with the whole supported at the end by “a list of books and articles in technical journals, relating to the subject of continuous girders (in part or in whole), in the German, French, and English languages, published between 1854 and 1874" (pp. 52–54).
Provenance: Ex–Franklin Institute Library (its on-site sale 1986) with its bookplate, lending rules, and stamps.
Publisher's pebbled brown cloth, stamped in blind and gilt on front cover and gilt on spine; top of spine pulled with a chip. Fore-, top, and bottom edges of book and all odd-numbered pages with the library's stamp, and even-numbered pages with offset from the stamps; titIe-page and one other leaf with a perforation-stamp.
A testament to why 19th-century librarians were so often called enemies of books. (35448)

Fly Fly! — 50 Copies Only
Koelewyn, Arie. Paper airplanes 1911 and 1973. Philadelphia: Paper Airplane Press, 1977. 12mo. [1] f., 12 pp., [1] f.
$40.00
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Illustrated with diagrams. “This is publication Number 1 of The Paper Airplane Press. 25 copies have been made for private distribution (A–Y) and 25 copies for sale (1–25).” This is one of the numbered copies. Signed by the author, who was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania in 1977, this is no. 14.
Interesting and rare.
Sewn in original stiff wrappers with printed label on front, some glue action. Very good condition. (36847)
Kay's
Improved
& Enlarged
Edition of
the
Universal
Receipt Book
[A Best-Selling How-To
Guide]
Mackenzie,
Colin. Mackenzie's five
thousand receipts in all the useful and domestic arts: Constituting a complete
practical library ... A new American, from the latest London edition. With numerous
and important additions generally; and the medical part carefully revised and
adapted to the climate of the U. States; and also a new and most copious index.
By an American physician. Philadelphia: James Kay, Jr. & Bro., and Pittsburgh:
C.H. Kay & Co., (© 1829). 8vo (22 cm, 8.6"). 456 pp.; illus.
$160.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Early U.S. edition: All-encompassing compendium of 19th-century practical knowledge — anything you can't do using instructions from this manual, you probably shouldn't be trying in the first place, though one assumes that in many cases there are more effective modern means now established! The work starts out with metallurgy (including everything you need to know in order to assay the value of silver, cast bronze finely, or color steel blue), proceeds to art (make your own crayons, or paint a miniature on ivory), and ranges to subjects such as farriery, tanning, horticulture, and husbandry, before closing with an assortment of miscellanea not covered by any previous header. Culinary topics include brewing, wine-making, preserving, and confectionary, as well as good basic recipes for such classics as potted beef, quince pudding, mock turtle soup, and “tomata catsup”; the carving appendix is illustrated with in-text wood engravings. The medicine section is quite lengthy, and covers ailments both mild and severe.
Five Thousand Receipts was first printed in America in 1826, and enjoyed as enthusiastic a reception in the United States as it previously had in England. This is the fourth American edition, here in the Kay variant giving “122 Chestnut Street – near 4th” as the publisher's address.
Provenance: Francis Kelsey, New York City.
Bitting 299; Lowenstein 122; Shoemaker 39366. Contemporary sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-stamped decorations; worn and abraded, joints open and fragile, front cover darkened, leather lost at spine extremities. Front free endpaper with early inked ownership inscription; front fly-leaf with small hole and pencilled annotations. Pages with varying degrees of age-toning and spotting, several signatures deeply browned. Some corners dog-eared. One leaf with upper outer corner torn away, with loss of a few words; one leaf with tear from lower margin extending into text without loss; one leaf with internal closed tear, without loss. Used, as this usually was! (27405)

A Metamorphosis Metamorphosis
Marino, Giambattista. L'Adone, poema del Cavalier
Marino: con gli argomenti del Conte Fortuniano Sanvitale, e l'allegorie di Don Lorenzo Scoto.
Amsterdam: No publisher/printer, 1680. 12mo (16.5 cm, 6.5"). 2 vols. I: [18] ff., 660 pp. (i.e.,
662). II: 658; 34 pp.
$600.00
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Giambattista Marino (Giovan Battista Marino, 1569–1625) was
Italy's greatest Baroque poet. His extravagant style became known as Marinism, or Seicentismo, inspiring a century of lyricists known as Marinisti. However the poet's reputation suffered in the 18th and 19th centuries when critics dismissed many fruits of the Baroque period as “all form no substance” (Guardiani, 74). It was not until the mid–20th century that Baroque literature was reevaluated and Marino's work was newly admired by scholars.
First published at Paris in 1623 and
placed on the Index in 1627, L'Adone is a
complicated narrative based on the myth of Venus and Adonis from Ovid's Metamorphoses,
combined with other myths and passages imitating Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and French writers.
These elements are intertwined with novelties, including a lyrical autobiography modeled on
Ovid's (canto IX, 59–91), and a eulogy for Marino's contemporary
Galileo and his telescope
(canto X, 42–47). Composed of over 5,000 octaves in 20 canti — almost 41,000 verses,
Marino's complicated, ornate poem is
one of the longest epics ever written in Italian.
The edition in hand is printed in roman and italic, with factotum initials and a handful of
woodcut tailpieces. The title-page in the first volume is printed in red and black, and black only
in the second, with both volumes featuring the printer's device of an armillary sphere: mark of the
Elzevirs, who printed the 1678 edition in Amsterdam?
On Marino, see: DBI
online. Quarter calf over paper-covered boards, recently rebacked with
original spine leather laid down; spine tooled creating compartments accented with gilt center
ornaments, author and title gilt on black morocco spine in second one. Scuffed, chipped, and
soiled but sturdy; foxed throughout though never more than moderately; edges uncut.
(30910)

Before There Were Crock-Pots
Mitchell, Margaret J. The fireless cook book. A manual of the construction and use of appliances for cooking by retained heat. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1920. 8vo. xii, 315, [1] pp.; illus.
$75.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
Written by a teacher of domestic science and former dietitian of Manhattan State Hospital (not the novelist of Gone with the Wind fame), this how-to book offers both “economy of fuel” and “a mind free from all care of the meal that is cooking” (p. 7). The work describes techniques for building and assembling portable insulating pails, refrigerating boxes, insulated ovens, and hay-boxes, followed by
250 recipes making use of slow cooking. The instructions are illustrated with in-text engravings; at the back of the volume is a series of experiments designed to demonstrate the insulating powers of different materials, the effects of food density upon the temperature maintained, detection of poisonous metals that may be dissolved from the cooker utensils, etc. This is the third edition, following the first of 1909.
Bitting 326 (for 1909 & 1911 eds.); Brown, Culinary Americana, 2637 (first ed. only). Not in Cagle & Stafford. Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black with title and images of fireless cookers; mild rubbing to extremities, very faint scratches to back cover. Front hinge (inside) with small area of insect damage near head. A clean, solid copy. (30292)

The Science & Mechanics of
Iron, ILLUSTRATED
Overman, Frederick. The manufacture of iron, in all its various branches. Philadelphia: Henry C. Baird, 1850. 8vo (24 cm, 9.4"). 492, [4 (adv.)] pp.; illus.
$450.00
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Illustrated with
150 in-text wood engravings done by William B. Gihon, this important early treatise on the “practical utility” of the technology of the iron industry was written by a prominent mining engineer and metallurgist. The title-page proclaims, “Including a description of wood-cutting, coal-digging, and the burning of charcoal and coke; the digging and roasting of iron ore; the building and management of blast furnaces, working by charcoal, coke, or anthracite; the refining of iron, and the conversion of the crude into wrought iron by charcoal forges and puddling furnaces . . . to which is added, an essay on the manufacture of steel.” This is the second edition, following the first of the previous year.
Publisher's brown cloth, covers and spine with blind-stamped decorations and gilt-stamped vignettes; extremities rubbed, spine head chipped, gilt lightly rubbed. Ex–social club library: paper shelving label on spine, 19th-century bookplate, front free endpaper lacking, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Small crescent burn mark to upper margin of title-page, a very few small smudges elsewhere, otherwise clean. (28291)
For SCIENCE, click here.

Two Seasonal Spectacles at the Theatre Royal
SPECIAL EFFECTS 1829
Playbill. Broadside. Begins: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. This evening, Monday, December 28, 1829, His Majesty's Servants will act the tragedy of King Richard III. [London]: Pr. by J. Tabby, [1829]. Folio (34.5 cm, 13.5"). [2] ff.
$125.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
Unusual theatrical bifolium: two attached playbills from 1829. The first sheet advertises a Shakespeare production starring Mr. Aitken, Mr. Kean, Mrs. Faucit, and Miss Faucit, along with
“a Splendid Comic Christmas Pantomime” called Jack in the Box; or, Harlequin and the Princess of the Hidden Island. The latter includes a descriptive list of the scenes as painted by Clarkson Stanfield (“The Giant's Dining Parlour,” “Lime-Kilns, near Gravesend,” “Cheesemonger's Shop and Wine Vaults,” etc.).
The second sheet is for Stanfield's “Grand Local Diorama,” the grand finale of which involved the “magnificent display of the Falls of the Virginia Waters, seen through the Fairy Temple of Luminaria” — facilitated by a hydraulic apparatus capable of discharging 39 tons of water, “forming a coup d'oeil never before witnessed on any stage.”
A contemporary of Stanfield's once called him “the prince of scene-painters,” and his dioramas were legendary for their beauty and immersive effects.
Split halfway up center fold and neatly repaired from rear; one untrimmed outer edge slightly ragged. Gently age-toned.
Delightful (and very displayable) piece of theatrical ephemera. (36575)
Much on
“The Great Buzaglo”
[Tickell, Richard]. The project. A poem. Dedicated to Dean Tucker. The fifth edition. London: Pr. for T. Becket, 1779. 4to. [2] ff., 12 pp.
$175.00
Unusual: ESTC gives listings for fourth and sixth editions, but not for a fifth edition.
The "Buzaglo" referred to in the poem is the eponymous
cast-iron stove designed by London inventor/ironmaster Abraham Buzaglo, which the author of the poem contends will, once installed, quell party strife in the House of Commons by warming the uncomfortable chill that provokes and riles the more partisan members.
Recent marbled paper wrappers. Very light foxing on first three leaves. Two page numbers shaved. (3689)
“Horse-Hoing” — 6
NIFTY Fold-Out Plates
Tull, Jethro. The horse-hoing husbandry: Or, an essay on the principles of tillage and vegetation.... London: Pr. for the author, and sold by G. Strahan, T. Woodward, A. Miller, J. Stagg, and J. Brindley, 1733. Folio (30.2 cm, 11.875"). [4], x, 200 pp.; pp. [201–202]. 6 fold-out plts. [bound with] Tull, Jethro. A supplement to the essay on horse-hoing husbandry.... London: Pr. for and sold by the author, and may be had at Mr. Mills's, London, at John Aitkins's, Esq, in Edinburgh, and at the Bear in Hungerford, Berks., 1736. Folio. pp. [203–205], 206–69; [1] pp.
$1500.00
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Improvements in farming founded on a scientific basis made British agriculture one of the strongest in Europe in the 18th century. Though called to the bar, Jethro Tull (1674–1741) never practiced law, but devoted himself to farming on land that had belonged to his father. From the beginning he set about trying to discover ways of doing things better, including inventing a number of implements, as this work reveals both in text and in image. His work proved very successful—Tull’s “seed drills” revolutionized planting techniques—and it saw a number of editions; it was translated into French, whence it proved influential on the Continent. This volume’s
six beautifully engraved, pleasantly intelligible plates (“W. Thorpe, sculp.) illustrate some of Tull’s inventions, including improved plows and drills for planting seeds.

First printed in London in 1731, Horse-hoing is here (likely) the fourth edition. Bound with it is the first edition of the interesting Supplement issued in 1736, directed largely to answering Tull’s detractors. The first title is fairly widely held, in libraries; the latter, much less so.
Goldsmiths’-Kress 7065; ESTC T81915 and N24607. Contemporary calf with remnants of gilt; dry, flaking, and partially gone to red, with some chips to edges, corners, and spine tips; old repairs to joints. Remnants of bookplate on front pastedown. Old water/mildew damage to lower margins, occasionally making its way a bit into text; several leaves repaired, long since. Plates generally quite clean and always pleasing, with faintest waterstaining to lower portion of plate 6 (only). All edges speckled red. (11286)

“Horse-Hoeing”
— COBBETT's
Introduction
Tull, Jethro. The horse-hoeing husbandry: or, a treatise on the principles of tillage and vegetation, wherein is taught a method of introducing a sort of vineyard culture into the corn-fields, in order to increase their product and diminish the common expense. By Jethro Tull. London: William Cobbett, 1829. 8vo. xxiv, 466 pp., 1 plt. (included in pagination).
$300.00
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Second Cobbett edition of this work on scientific farming that was first published in 1731 to some little controversy concerning “plagarism.” This edition contains William Cobbett's lengthy introduction “explanatory of some circumstances connected with the History and Division of the Work; and containing an account of certain experiments of recent date.” Illustrated with a single full-page woodcut diagram accompanying the chapter on roots.
Published at the beginning of renewed interest in the U.S. and England in “scientific agriculture.”
Goldsmiths'-Kress 25812. Publisher's blind-embossed green cloth, rebacked with much of old spine unobtrusively reapplied. Binding a little soiled and spine darkened with gilt of title dimmed; tips of corners chipped. Instances of dust-soiling at some top margins; one leaf with loss and soiling along outer edge without affecting text. Ex-library with old rubber-stamp on the title-page and several other pages. (24439)

American WINE & More 1867
United States. Department of Agriculture. Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the year 1867. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1868. 8vo (23.5 cm; 9.25"). xix, [1], 512 pp., XXXVII plates; illus.
$225.00
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A presentation copy of Acting Commissioner John W. Stokes' report to Congress for the year 1867. The report includes reports and research on a variety of crops and domestic animals; steam and other cultivation, and rural construction; patents; agricultural clubs, schools, associations; also climate and meteorology. The authors include Thomas Antisell (chemist of the
department), Thomas Glover (entomologist), F.R. Elliott (on hardy fruit, especially apples), Walter W.W. Bowie (on tobacco), and Mrs. Ellen S. Tupper (winter bee keeping), to single out a
few.
Freethinker George Husmann (of Herman, Missouri) provided this cataloguer's favorite report, “American Wine and Wine Making.”
The excellent plates are divided between steel and wood engravings, with additional wood-engraved illustrations in some texts.
The presenter of the volume was R.T. McLain, chief clerk of the Department of Agriculture; the Hon. J. Gregory Smith, the recipient, was the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company.
Binding: A presentation binding of black morocco over boards with slightly bevelled edges. Covers with a gilt triple fillet border and a gilt floral vine inner “border.” Recipient's name in gilt in center of front board. Round spine, raised bands, gilt spine extra; gilt roll on board edges, different gilt roll on turn-ins. Pink endpapers of a textured paper, printed with an overall pattern of small gilt interlocking circles. Green silk place marker. All edges gilt.
A very nice example of a mid-19th-century presentation binding.
Binding as above, lightly rubbed at the joints (outside) and board edges. McLain's presentation card pasted to front pastedown, above Smith's bookplate.
A very good copy of a book that is, as we say here, “interesting for more than one reason.” (35244)

Reading Up on
Printing-Related Patents
United States Patent Office. [binding title] “Patents on copper printing rolls.” [Washington]: 1876–1904. 8vo (28.8 cm, 11.35"). [68] pp.; 36 plts.
$500.00
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A lawyer's gathering of 25 important British and U.S. patents related to technological developments in printing, dating from 1876 through 1904. The patents here include “Engraving-Machine” and various specifications on the Pantograph (by John Hope, of the Hope & Sons textile printing company, whose “pantograph engraving machine . . . revolutionized the business of roll-engraving,” Bicknell, History of the State of Rhode Island, 141), “Phototypography” (by Hannibal Goodwin, famed for later inventing roll film), and “Calico-Printing Machine” (by James Blair, the Scottish inventor of the aforementioned roller). Also represented is John Jacobson, holder of several photographic patents, and British engraver Gabriel Raphael Hugon.
The patent record copies are accompanied by
36 plates illustrating the various devices. A
typed index is stitched in at the front; the title given above comes from this volume's spine label.
A full list of contents is available upon enquiry.
Provenance: Front and back pastedown each with rubber-stamp of A. Bell Malcolmson, attorney and counsellor at law; final page with pencilled annotation: “Bind for Mr. Malcolmson.” Malcolmson is recorded as having been involved, in 1908, with a case regarding patent infringement of a method for duplicating typewritten work.
Contemporary tan cloth, spine with gilt-stamped red leather title-label; cloth spotted and moderately discolored, extremities and spine label lightly rubbed. Preliminary index pages, of onion skin, each with short tear from outer margin; one text leaf with small chip to upper margin; some leaves creased; occasional pencilled annotations and marks of emphasis. (30399)
Venanson, Flaminius. De l’invention de la boussole nautique. Naples: Chez Ange Trani, 1808. 8vo (22.5 cm, 8.9"). 172 pp.
$750.00
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Sole edition: History of
the nautical compass, in which the author attempts to assign credit for the invention of that device not to ancient Chinese or Arabic minds but rather to marine pilot Flavio Gioia d’Amalfi, with much accompanying praise of the “supériorité maritime” of the medieval Italians.
Scarce: OCLC, RLIN, and NUC-Pre1956 locate only six U.S. holdings.
Brunet, V, 1118. Contemporary limp paste paper–covered wrappers, spine with hand-inked label; paper chipped at edges and front joint open; spine label darkened and peeling. Front pastedown with bookseller’s ticket and institutional bookplate; front free endpaper and title-page with institutional stamp; front free endpaper with ownership inscriptions dated 1829. Pages untrimmed. (19120)

Owned by a Very Interesting Woman
Virgilius, Polydorus (Polydore Vergil). ... De rervm inventoribvs libri VIII. Et de prodigiis libri III. Amstelodami: Apud Danielem Elzevirium,, 1671. 12mo (13.3 cm, 5.25"). *12**8A–X12Y14Z12Aa–Ff12 (verso of F11 adhered to a blank, -F12 & -G1-6); [20] ff., 511, [1] pp., [3] ff., 100 pp., [41] ff. (without the index leaves to the Prodigies).
$250.00
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The first and only Elzevir edition of Polidore Virgil's works on 1) inventions and 2) the natural and the supernatural, and whether credence should be given to such alleged phenomena as prodigious events and portents. While the three inventors depicted on the engraved title-page here include
Gutenberg, most of the inventions and geniuses discussed are from classical times, chiefly Greco-Roman but with attention to Persia, Egypt, and the Arab world. The work was first published in the late 15th century and went through many subsequent editions.
Polydore Vergil (ca. 1470–1555) was an Italian humanist scholar, historian, priest, and diplomat who spent most of his life in England.
Willems is not fond of this book, saying of it “L'ouvrage est assez peu recherché, et n'a qu'une valeur médiocre.” Its “middling value” in his day may have been due to its typography: Daniel Elzevir had the book printed in the shop of the heirs of Jan Elzevir in Leyden. Our copy is attractive, however, and the work is certainly an important one that was read, loved, and cited in its day with enormous enthusiasm.
With a particularly engaging engraved title-page, and with woodcut ornamental initials and head- and tailpieces.
Provenance: 20th-century bookplate of Elizabeth Wade White (1906–1994), an American poet, activist in progressive causes, and author of The Life of Anne Bradstreet: The Tenth Muse. In 1938 she had a brief affair with Valentine Ackland (1906–69, born Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland, the English modernist poet). In 1939 White met Evelyn Virginia Holahan (1905–85) who became her life partner. With White's pencil note “August 1929. Bought at the Hague for 22 guilders.”
Binding: 18th-century crushed green morocco, spine with raised bands and a red leather spine-label; covers and spine-compartments double-framed in gilt, the latter with center devices. Gilt inner dentelles, all edges gilt, silk marker.
Willems 1464; Copinger 4882; Goldsmiths'-Kress 01963. Binding as above, rubbed at joints (outside) and with spine rather attractively sunned to olive. Lacks the index leaves for De prodigiis; still, a text-complete handsome volume with a very interesting provenance. (39815)

“To Write or Speak the Epilogue after Any Great & Grand Drama Is
by No Means an Easy Task”
Whewell, William; Henry T. De la Beche; & Others. Lectures on the results of the Exhibition, delivered before the Society of Arts, Manufacturers, and Commerce, at the suggestion of H.R.H. Prince Albert, president of the society. Philadelphia: Reprinted by A. Hart, late Cary & Hart (Printed by T.K. & P.G. Collins), 1852. 12mo (17.9 cm; 7"). [2], 463 pp.
$150.00
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Twelve essays about the effects of
the Great Exhibition of 1851 on different industries written by experts in the field, including mining, agriculture, education, engineering, and more.
Provenance: From the German Society of Philadelphia (properly released) with bookplate on front pastedown and its 19th-century handwritten shelfmark on endpaper.
Publisher's red textured cloth with title and ALL authors' names gilt-lettered on spine; covers double-ruled in blind, gilt circlet surrounding title on front cover, yellow endpapers with printed publisher's advertisements; binding gently rubbed and lightly soiled, spine pulled at top with loss of cloth and text moderately cocked. Marked as above, interior clean. (36185)
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