Art & Architecture

Contact Alex Day or Andrea Mazzocchi

Art & Architecture encompasses a broad sweep of material, from early works concerning architecture and architectural history, and books and manuscripts on the fine arts and aesthetics, antiquities and archaeology, to pattern and design books, and private press books and fine bindings. The department also handles original artwork, artistic archives, posters, and propaganda material.

  1. LABORDE, Ernest.

    Vieilles maisons boutiques & paysages de Paris. Eaux fortes originales de Ernest Laborde. Presentées par Gustave...

    Paris, Jules Meynial, 1918 [1919].

    First edition, very rare: two series of twenty etchings each on the most picturesque houses and shops in Paris, produced between 1911 and 1918 by Ernest Laborde (1870–1935).

    £1950

  2. CELLINI, Benvenuto. 

    Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino da lui medesimo scritta, nella quale molte curiose...

    ‘Cologne’ [i.e. Florence], ‘Pietro Martello’ [i.e. Bartolini], [1792]. 

    The counterfeit edition of Benvenuto Cellini’s seminal autobiography, extra-illustrated with two large engravings illustrating his ‘Perseus and Medusa’ and the ‘Hercules and Cacus’ of his rival sculptor Bandinelli. 

    £675

  3. THENOT, Jean Pierre.

    Vollständige Anweisung zur Aquarellmalerei und zum Tuschen ... 1. Heft (all published).

    Leipzig, Kirchner, 1837.

    First German edition, originally published the preceding year in Paris. A charming watercolour manual.

    £350

  4. [PARIS UPRISING.]

    Votez toujours. Je ferai le reste [Always vote. I’ll do the rest].

    Paris, Comite d'initiative pour un movement revolutionnaire, Imprimerie Robert et Cie, 1968.

    First edition. A striking image of General De Gaulle patting France on the head for obediently voting, a baton cunningly concealed behind him. 1968 was a year when passions were flying high in France. The communist and socialist parties had formed an alliance in February with a view to replacing...

    £550

  5. SPON, Jacob.

    Voyage d’Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grece, et du Levant, fait aux années 1675 et 1676 par Jacob Spon docteur medecin...

    Lyons, Antoine Cellier, 1678.

    Very rare first edition of ‘one of the most important accounts of travels in the Levant, and the first description of Athens which was systematic, detailed, and trustworthy’ (Blackmer).

    £4750

  6. [WALLET.]

    Wallet with manuscript and printed waste.

    France, c. 1790.

    An attractive late eighteenth-century wallet in the guise of a wallet-bound book, possibly re-using an earlier eighteenth-century binding, the interior compartments composed of manuscript and printed waste.

    £950

  7. BOLZANI, A. M.

    Wegweiser zum Seidenbau für Nord-Deutschland und insbesondere für Preussen.

    Berlin, Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1831.

    First edition. Bolzani, originally from Como in Italy, was a picture- and print-dealer in Berlin who also ran a successful silkworm cultivation enterprise. His book deals with all aspects of sericulture. Bolzani was especially keen to have Prussian state funding for silkworm cultivation and corresponded...

    £275

  8. PARLIAMENTARY RECRUITING COMMITTEE.

    Which? Have you a reason or only an excuse for not enlisting Now!

    London, The Abbey Press, 1915.

    A forthright call to the men of London, encouraging them to enlist for military service during World War One.

    £250

  9. HALL, Trevor H.

    The Winder sale of old conjuring books.

    Leeds, W. S. Maney & Son Ltd., 1975.

    First edition, number 52 of 250 copies, numbered and signed by the author, of this study of the public dispersal of the Leeds-based collector Roland Winder’s library of conjuring books.

    £35

  10. DODGSON, Campbell (editor).

    Woodcuts of the XV Century in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum.

    London, British Museum, 1934 [– 1935].

    First edition, scarce, of Dodgson’s authoritative and thoroughly illustrated catalogue of fifteenth-century woodcuts in the British Museum. Published after two decades as Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, the monumental Woodcuts of the XV Century is considerably scarcer...

    £750

  11. SHENSTONE, William.

    The Works, in Verse and Prose… in three Volumes … Fifth Edition …

    London: Printed for J. Dodsley … 1777.

    Fifth edition of the Works (1764), the first edition of which was planned by Shenstone but published after his death, with Robert Dodsley’s description of Shenstone’s important garden at The Leasowes, one of the first natural landscape gardens in England and one of the most influential,...

    £325

  12. POUND Omar S. and Philip GROVER.

    Wyndham Lewis a Descriptive Bibliography … With a Checklist of B.B.C. Broadcasts compiled...

    Folkestone, Dawson / Archon Books, [1978].

    First edition. Bridson’s checklist appears on pp. 163-75.

    £50

  13. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Wyndham Lewis the Artist.

    From ‘Blast’ to Burlington House’ … London, Laidlaw & Laidlaw, [1939].

    First edition, first issue.

    £125

  14. BEARDSLEY, Aubrey, art editor; Henry HARLAND, literary editor

    The Yellow Book.  An Illustrated Quarterly.  Volume...

    London [– & New York], Elkin Mathews & John Lane [– John Lane, The Bodley Head], and Boston, Copeland & Day, April 1894 [− April 1897]. 

    An excellent set of the first edition of The Yellow Book, the decade-defining illustrated quarterly that captured the spirit of decadence and aestheticism and gave its name to ‘the yellow nineties’. 

    £2000