Natural History
First edition of the Hortus Farnesianus
The first edition of the Hortus Farnesianus, printed in Rome in 1625.
A superb copy preserved in the editor’s original cased binding.
[CASTELLI (P)] ALDINI, Tobie. Exactissima descriptio rariorum quarundam plantarum, Que continentur Rome in Horto Farnesiano : Tobia Aldino Cesenate Auctore.
Rome, J. Mascardi, 1625.
Folio [350 x 243 mm] preserved in the editor’s original cased binding. Contemporary binding.
First edition.
Hunt, 208; Nissen, 13; Seguier, p. 34; L. Allatius, Apes Urbanae, sive de viris illustribus qui ad anno 1630 per totum 1632 Roman adsuerunt, 1633, p. 218.
The work contains an engraved title, 22 full-page engravings and 6 woodcuts.
“There has been considerable dispute about the authorship of this work; Seguier quotes Allatius for the statement that Petrus Castelli wrote a book which anwers to this description ‘Alieno nomine… edidit’ but Nissen quotes a contrary opinion from a friend of Castelli. It has not, we believe, been previously noticed that the preliminary leaf with the poem ‘to the learned author’ by J.C. Lummenaeus contains an acrostic, the initial letters giving ‘Petrus Castellus Romanus’. (Arpad Plesch, n°125).
“The book was published under the name of Tobie Aldini. He was an Italian doctor and botanist from Cesena in the 17th century, and the personal doctor of the cardinal Odoard Farnese, who set him up as the director of his botanical garden. Aldini published a description of this garden under the title: ‘Descriptio plantarum horti Farnesiani, Rome’, 1625, folio, with 28 plates, much well-known under the name of ‘Hortus Farnesianus’. Aldini gave rather fine plates of some of these plants, and exact descriptions, but overcharged with erudition. Among these plants, there is an acacia, or mimosa, which kept the nickname of ‘Farnesiana’ that reminds us of the gratitude we should show to the memory of the cardinal Farnese, who was a protector and the friend of the scholars, and that indicates the garden where this tree was first cultivated. It is nowadays naturalized in Italy and in the South of France.
The author promised to publish more figures; but they remained unpublished. It seems that Aldini was only the figurehead of this book and that it was in fact the work of Pierre Castelli, a Roman doctor, who expressly writes in the foreword that he wrote everything: ‘Omnia scripsi’.”
A superb wide-margined copy, uncut, with very bright engravings, preserved in the original editor’s cased binding, a very rare condition.
Price: € 11 000
Tropical butterflies from around the world
First edition of the most beautiful book ever published about butterflies,
illustrated with more than 1650 contemporary hand-coloured specimens.
CRAMER, Pierre. Papillons exotiques des trois parties du monde l’Asie, l’Afrique et l’Amérique.
A Amsterdam, chez S.J. Baalde, à Utrecht, chez Barthelemy Wild, [1775-] 1779-1782 [-1784].
[With:] -STOLL, Caspar. Supplément à l’ouvrage, intitulé les Papillons exotiques, des trois parties du monde l’Asie, l’Afrique et l’Amérique ; par M. Pierre Cramer.
Amsterdam, chez Nic. Th. Gravius, [1787-] 1791.
5 volumes 4to [296 x 228 mm] bound in red straight-grained full morocco, wide foliage border on covers, arms in the centre, spines ribbed lightly faded and decorated with fleurons and gold dots, gilt edges, sea green doublures and endpapers. Bozérian jeune.
First edition of this masterpiece of entomology.
Nissen 985; Graesse, Trésor de livres rares et précieux, 294; Sabin 17382; Cohen, 262; Brunet, II, 404.
It is the first work dealing with tropical butterflies to be arranged in accordance with the Linnaean system. It contains the description of more than 1650 butterflies species, most of them being described here for the first time.
It is a « great work which was highly expensive at the end of the 18th century » emphasizes Cohen.
Pierre Cramer (1721-1776) was a rich wool dealer and a great entomologist collector. He formed a magnificent natural history cabinet abounding with butterflies coming from all around the world, enlarged thanks to his relations with the Dutch traders and settlers established abroad and the sailors of the Compagnie des Indes.
When Cramer undertakes the catalogue of his collection, he calls on the painter G. W. Lambertz to draw the specimens he owns, as well as some from other cabinets.
Cramer dies in 1776, after the publication of the eighth part, and the work is then continued by Stoll.
Caspar Stoll gives the description from nature of caterpillars and chrysalis of Surinam bred by Renaud, an amateur who stayed for a long time in these countries, as well as by Vaillant, collected during his travels to the Cape of Good Hope. He also shows butterflies and phalenes, some of which described for the first time, from Surinam, Guinea Cost, Brazil …
The supplement, published 9 years after the fourth volume of the Papillons exotiques, is rare and is missing from most copies.
The superb and rich illustration contains 2 frontispieces engraved by Th. Koning and C.J. de Huyser, and 442 outstanding plates (including 42 in the supplement) representing 2709 full-size species, drawn from the originals by Lambertz and copperplate engraved. All the illustrations were finely contemporary hand-coloured under the supervision of Cramer himself.
« Pierre Cramer, from Amsterdam, published in Dutch and French 400 plates of exotic butterflies from the three parts of the world. It is a splendid work for the sharpness and elegance of the figures. It is much sought-after by natural history lovers. » (F. Cuvier, Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles, 34)
A very beautiful copy of the most beautiful book ever published about butterflies, complete with the rare supplement and uniformly bound at the time in straight-grained red morocco by Bozérian jeune.
Provenance: arms of Pavée de Vendeuvre stamped towards 1830 on covers. Pavée de Vendeuvre was a deputy under the Restoration and he was peer of France in 1837.
Price: € 45 000
An important economic treatise dedicated to wool-animals
First edition of this important economic treatise dedicated to wool-animals.
A copy on thick paper.
Compiègne, 1770.
CARLIER (Abbé Claude). Traité des bêtes à laine, ou méthode d’élever et de gouverner les troupeaux aux champs, et à la bergerie : ouvrage pratique, suivi du dénombrement et de la description des principales espèces de bêtes à laine dont on fait le commerce en France ; avec un état des différentes qualités de laines et des usages auxquels elles servent dans les manufactures.
De l’imprimerie de Louis Bertrand à Compiègne, et se vend à Paris chez Vallat la Chapelle, 1770.
2 volumes 4to [250 x 185 mm]: title, XIX, 576 pp. and 2 folding plates for the first volume; title, then pagination from 577 to 891 for the second volume. Light waterstain in the upper margin of pp. 296 to 312 of the first volume.
Contemporary full granite-like calf, triple gilt fillet on covers, flat decorated spines, red morocco lettering pieces, red edges. Head of spine and lower corners of the first volume slightly worn.
First edition.
It is the most important and comprehensive work about this subject. It gives a description of all the different breeds; it deals with shepherds and sheepfolds, pastures and diseases, but also with trade in the various provinces of France, and also with the wool industry. It gives a precise list of the sheep population in the middle of the 18th century.
« The sheep breeding is the big concern of « improver » owners. The Financial Controller Bertin pushed Carlier, long before the famous Daubenton, to questionnaire surveys into the quantity of livestock per acre, the average weight of animals, etc. The answers are used in his important « Traité des bêtes à laine », Compiègne 1770 ». (Jean Claude Perrot, Une Histoire intellectuelle de l’Economie Politique, p. 428)
Claude Carlier (1725-1787), French economist and archaeologist, is better known under the name of “Abbé Carlier”. « He left, besides many articles inserted in the « Journal des Savants », the « Journal de Physique » and the « Journal de Verdun » :[…] « Mémoire sur les laines », 1755 ; « Considérations sur les moyens de rétablir en France les bonnes espèces de bêtes à laine », 1762 […] ; « Traité sur les manufactures de laineries » ; « Dissertation sur l’état du commerce en France sous les rois de la première et de la deuxième race », 1753 […]. Carlier won nine academic prizes during his lifetime, including four at the Académie des inscriptions. » (Biographie universelle, VIII, 746)
A fine wide-margined copy, very fresh, printed on thick paper.
Price: € 3 000
De luxe edition of Buffon’s Natural History
De luxe edition of Buffon’s Natural History printed on vellum paper,
illustrated with 233 fine contemporary hand-coloured engravings,
bound in bright red straight-grained morocco by Thouvenin.
BUFFON, Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de / Louis Jean Marie DAUBENTON/ Bernard de LACEPEDE. Œuvres complètes de Buffon, mises en ordre par M. le Comte de Lacépède. Seconde édition.
Paris, chez Rapet, 1819-1822.
25 volumes 8vo [215 x 130 mm], full red straight-grained morocco, gilt fillet on covers, blind-stamped border and central rose, spine ribbed and nicely decorated with gilt borders, inner border, edges gilt, few leaves slightly brown. Contemporary binding signed by Thouvenin.
De luxe edition of Buffon’s works printed on vellum paper with the engravings contemporary hand-coloured. It is illustrated with the author’s portrait by Dévéria, 6 engravings in black, 4 folding maps, 96 engravings dedicated to quadrupeds and 126 engravings dedicated to birds, each of them finely contemporary hand-coloured.
Here is the foreward : « Pour donner à cette seconde édition toute la correction désirable, nous avons suivi le texte de l’édition, intitulé Vue générale des Progrès de plusieurs branches des Sciences naturelles depuis le milieu du originale, in-4, de l’Imprimerie Royale… On trouvera dans le dernier volume le discours de M. Le Comte de Lacépède dernier siècle ».
« L’Histoire naturelle » is an encyclopedic work, conceived and elaborated by the natural scientist Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788) who wrote it with the help of a team of scholars and writers. It is only when he was appointed intendant of the King’s Garden (current Jardin des Plantes) and lived surrounded by the collections from the Royal Cabinet of Natural History (currently known as the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle) that he conceived the layout of this grandiose work.
Since the publication of its first volumes « L’Histoire naturelle » was greeted with resounding success. Buffon was admired by all Europe and enjoyed a celebrity equal to Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s. He was called “le Pline et l’Aristote de la France” and without taking any step he became a member of the Académie Française; his statue was erected during his lifetime. « L’Histoire naturelle » fairly appeared as a masterpiece of modern science and of the awakening of minds, like the Encyclopedia which is contemporary of it. It brought into fashion the genuine science of observation in opposition to unskilled experiences which were, at this time, in vogue within society people. It immediately gave rise to an intense development of natural history.
The edition was printed on ordinary paper with black figures, while some de luxe copies, like this one, were printed on vellum paper with contemporary hand-coloured figures.
A beautiful copy of which the 25 volumes were contemporary bound in bright red morocco with gilt and blind-stamped decorations by Thouvenin, one of the greatest bookbinders from the Restauration. The first and last volumes bear the master’s signature at the tail of the spines.
Price: € 17 000
One of the main works about viticulture
One of the main works from the 18th Century about viticulture.
BIDET, Nicolas. Traité sur la nature et sur la culture de la vigne ; sur le vin, la façon de le faire, et la manière de le bien gouverner. A l’usage des différens Vignobles du Royaume de France. Seconde édition. Augmentée & corrigée, par M. Bidet, de l’Académie d’Agriculture de Florence en Toscane, & Officier de la Maison du Roi. Et Revue par M. Duhamel Du Monceau. Avec Figures.
Paris, chez Savoye, 1759.
2 volumes 12mo [167 x 97 mm], I/ XXIV pp., 534, (1) f. and 3 folding plates; II/ (5) ff., 304 pp., 12 plates and 1 folding board. Bound in contemporary brown marbled calf.
The second edition, amply revised and enlarged, so much augmented that it’s almost a new book.
Vicaire 93; Simon 533; Oberlé 929; Dartois I, 88; Jöcher A.I., 1840.
That’s one of the main works from the 18th century about viticulture. It was produced under the eye of Duhamel du Monceau.
Nicolas Bidet (1709-1782) was the sommelier of the queen Marie-Antoinette. In this work, he deals with vineyards from Burgundy, the Dauphiné, the Languedoc, Provence, Auvergne, Berry, Lorraine, and from many other regions.
The 15 plates, drawn by Maugein and engraved by Choffart show wine presses, vats and of wine making instruments.
A precious copy of this rare book, the most beautiful to appear on the market since a long time, preserved in its fresh contemporary calf binding.
Provenance : Château de Voiron with the ex libris.
Price: € 7 500
First complete edition of the “Histoire des Antilles”
First complete edition of the “Histoire des Antilles”
uniformly bound in full vellum at the time of publication.
DU TERTRE, R. P. Jean-Baptiste. Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les François.
Paris, Thomas Jolly, 1667-1671.
4 parts bound in 3 volumes 4to [222 x 178 mm], I/ 1 frontispiece, (11) ff., 593 pp., (3) pp.; II/ (8) ff., 539 pp., 5 folding maps, 14 plates; III/ (9) ff., 317 pp., (9) pp., (4) ff., 362 pp., (7) ff., 4 folding plates. Small hole in p. 122 of part 3. Bound in contemporary stiff vellum, edges mottled.
First complete edition of « one of the most valuable work we possess on the West Indies ». (Sabin 21458).
Streit, Bibliotheca Missionum, 2001; Leclerc, Bibliotheca Americana, 1314; Picot, Catalogue Rothschild, 1984.
It is very difficult to find a complete copy of this work.
« The two last volumes of this work (one of the most valuable we possess on the West Indies) were published in 1671 and are extremely scarce; complete sets are difficult to be met with, and bear a high price » Rich.
Du Tertre was born in Calais in 1610. He took holy orders and his superiors sent him to the West Indies where he spent 18 years, from 1640 to 1658. He came up with plenty of information about the natural history of these islands and the customs of the inhabitants.
The illustration consists of an engraved frontispiece, 5 folding maps and 18 plates, of which 9 are folded.
A precious copy of this fundamental work for the history of the West Indies, uniformly bound at the time in full stiff vellum.
Price: €25 000