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. [OPTICAL PRINT.] 

    ‘No. 5.  Morgan’s improved protean scenery: Mount Vesuvius, as represented at the Surrey Zoological Gardens...

    London, Published by W. Morgan, [c. 1837]. 

    A remarkable metamorphic or ‘protean’ print depicting a dormant Vesuvius by day but, when held up to the light, showing a dramatic eruption in the night sky. 

    £675

  2. [PAPER TRADE.] 

    Arrest du conseil d’état du roi, portant modération et interprétation de plusieurs articles du tarif des...

    [Besançon?, 1772?] 

    A seemingly unrecorded issue of this decree governing tariffs on paper and cardboard in Louis XV’s France, with no imprint but with the colophon ‘fait à Besançon le 18 avril 1772, signé, Lacoré’. 

    £175

  3. PAPINI, Roberto.

    Le Arti d’Oggi: Architettura e Arti Decorative in Europa.

    Milan and Rome, Bestetti and Tumminelli, 1930.

    First edition of a thorough and extensively illustrated survey of architectural and artistic styles and artworks from across Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, compiled by the Italian art historian Roberto Papini (1883–1957), director of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and later...

    £300

  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. PARKER, Thomas Netherton.

    Leaves out of the Book of a Country Gentleman.

    Oswestry, W. Price, London, Longman & co., and Shrewsbury, Eddowes & Leake, 1847.

    First and only edition of this very rare compilation by Parker of his farm and estate experiments and inventions, one of one hundred copies privately published, and presented by the author to the Earl of Powis.

    £1950

  6. 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

  7. PAYNE, Anthony.

    Richard Hakluyt. A guide to his books and to those associated with him, 1580–1625.

    [London], Quaritch, 2008.

    In this guide various approaches to Hakluyt’s books are suggested under a number of interrelated headings – his patronage and connections; Italian and French influences; his use of illustration and his presentation of texts; his intentions; and his impact and readership. It is hoped that it will...

    £20

  8. PERUCCI, Francesco.

    Pompe funebri di tutte le nationi del mondo, raccolte dale storie sagre et profane.

    Verona, Francesco Rossi, 1639.

    First edition of Perucci’s account of the funeral practices of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, extensively illustrated with engravings copied in reverse from Porcacchi’s 1574 Funerali antichi di diversi popoli, et nationi, inscribed by a Scottish antiquary and documented book collector....

    £975

  9. PETRINI, Giovanni.

    Sixteen copper engravings depicting scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

    [Rome, late eighteenth century.]

    An attractive volume containing sixteen engravings by Giovanni Petrini of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, including renderings of famous paintings by the likes of Correggio, Poussin, Titian, Raphael, and Rubens.

    £1750

  10. [PFORZHEIMER, Carl H.]

    The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library: English Literature, 1475–1700.

    New York, Privately Printed [at the Morrill Press], 1940.

    First edition, limited, numbered 17 of 150 copies and signed by Pforzheimer on the frontispiece portrait, from the library of the pre-eminent collector of English literature Robert S. Pirie.

    £3500

  11. PIECK, Henri C.

    10 Dagen Die De Wereld Deden Wankelen.

    Amsterdam, Skovino, 1927.

    A rare lithograph of Pieck’s dramatic illustration for Ten Days that Shook the World (October in English), a silent film commissioned by the Soviet government to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the October Revolution. Made by the director of Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein, the...

    £300

  12. PIGHIUS, Stephanus Vinandus. 

    Themis dea, seu de lege divina …  Mythologia … in quatuor anni partes, ab auctore recognita. 

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1568. 

    First and only edition, scarce, of Pighius’s two treatises on Roman archaeology, one of the founding texts of scientific research into myths. 

    £450

  13. PLINY the Elder.

    Historiae mundi libri XXXVII, cum castigationibus et adnotationibus doctiss. & variis praeterea lectionibus ex...

    Frankfurt, Claude de Marne and heirs of Jean Aubry, 1608.

    First Frankfurt edition of Pliny’s Natural History, here bound as an enormous single volume with strikingly decorated edges featuring acorns and scrolls.

    £1400

  14. PORTA, Giambattista della.

    De humana physiognomonia … libri IIII; qui ab extimis, quae in hominum corporibus conspiciuntur signis,...

    Hanau, Wilhelm Antonius for [Frankfurt,] Peter Fischer, 1593.

    The second Latin edition and the first to be published in Germany of this richly illustrated work on physiognomy by the Italian polymath Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615), a beautiful copy in strictly contemporary German white calf.

    £2500

  15. [PORTUGAL.]

    Centro dei Comunisti. Lotta di classe e potere politico in Portogallo (Quaderni Comunisti).

    Rome, 26 September 1975.


    An historical overview of the Portuguese ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 25 April 1974 and its aftermath, including a reproduction of João Abel Manta’s famous poster showing Vasco Gonçalves, Portugal’s prime minister, with his arms around a member of the MFA (Movimento das Forças Armadas)...

    £100

  16. [POSTCARDS.]

    ‘PSH’. Twenty-nine manuscript postcards.

    London, 1912–c. 1920?.

    Hand-drawn postcards providing a rare, personal, and comic snapshot into English humour and the lives of London lovers in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

    £375

  17. POUND, Erza.

    Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, con un manifesto vorticista.

    Galleria Apollinaire Milano [Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1957].

    First edition thus, no. 123 of 500 copies, a translation by Pound’s daughter Mary de Rachewiltz of extracts from ‘Gaudier: a Postscript’ and ‘Vortex’ on the occasion of an exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire in December 1957.

    £75

  18. POUND, Ezra.

    Gaudier-Brzeska, a Memoir …

    [London,] The Marvell Press, [1960].

    Revised edition, inscribed by Dorothy Pound on behalf of her husband to ‘J[oyce] + G[eoffrey] Bridson. DP for EP / Sept 1961. Brunnenburg’.

    £250

  19. 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

  20. [PSALMS.]

    Les Pseaumes de David, mis en Vers François, revus et approuvez par le Synode Walon des Provinces-Unies. Nouvelle Edition.

    Amsterdam, ‘aux dépens de l’Eglise Françoise de Londres’, 1729’.

    New edition of the metrical Psalms of the Pléiade poet Clément Marot and the theologian Théodore de Bèze, extensively revised, with a new version of 149 Psalms, printed for the use of Huguenot émigrés.

    £950