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. 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

  2. [BIBLE.]

    The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments … diligently compared and revised …

    Oxford, T. Wright and W. Gill, 1769.

    First quarto edition of the Oxford ‘standard’ Bible, as revised by Benjamin Blayney of Hertford College, Oxford (1728–1801), later Regius Professor of Hebrew. The quarto and folio editions of 1769, of which this was the first to be finished, were printed from the same setting of type differently...

    £5250

  3. COX, John Roalfe.

    Horses in Accident and Disease: Notes and Sketches.

    Edinburgh, George Waterston & Sons for David Douglas, 1892.

    First edition of an elegantly illustrated veterinary work. An early advocate of the use of chloroform anaesthetic when operating on horses, J. Roalfe Cox here offers tender line drawings and brief descriptions of twenty-eight equine ailments.

    £70

  4. [COLOGNE.]

    Hôtel de Belle Vue à Deutz vis-à-vis de Cologne, tenu pour J. A. Kimmel.

    [Cologne, c. 1880.]

    An ambitious lithographic advertisement for the Hotel de Belle Vue in Deutz, facing Cologne over the Rhine, with a ‘Rhein-Panorama’ printed on the verso.

    £250

  5. MYERS, Robin, Andrew BURNETT, and Renae SATTERLEY.

    ‘I do not eat the bread of idleness’: Dr Andrew Coltée Ducarel 1713–1785,...

    The Garendon Press, 2023.

    This volume brings together revised versions of four of Robin Myers’s papers on aspects of Ducarel’s life and work published between 1994 and 2002, and ‘The Life and Times of the Ducarel Brothers’, her recent introductory essay to Two Huguenot Brothers: Letters of Andrew and James Coltée...

    £45

  6. GANF, Iulii Abramovich, and P. PISKUNOV, editor.

    Да здравствует конституция страны социализма!...

    Moscow, Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva, 1953.

    Typically Soviet poster illustrated by graphic artist Iuli Ganf, whose satirical work was published in magazines and newspapers such as Krokodil.

    £700

  7. [PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeevich.]

    Iubileinyi Al’bom v pamiat’ stoletiia so dnia rozhdeniia poeta 1799–1899 [A Jubilee Album...

    St Petersburg, A.F. Marx, 1899.

    First edition of an album in celebration of Pushkin, published as a supplement in the literary magazine Niva.

    £1500

  8. STODDARD, Roger.

    Jacques-Charles Brunet, Le Grand Bibliographe. A guide to the books he wrote, compiled, and edited and to the...

    [London], Quaritch, 2007.

    As an undergraduate in Brown University Roger Stoddard operated a second-hand bookshop from his dormitory room, issuing modest catalogues while working for Goodspeed’s Book Shop in the summer months. From 1958 until 1961 he assisted William Jackson, Librarian of the Houghton Library, and from 1961...

    £60

  9. [LABOURS OF THE MONTHS &c.] 

    Januarius.  Februarius.  Merz.  April … 

    Nuremberg, Joh. Andreae Endterische Handlung, [second half of eighteenth century]. 

    A scarce popular print depicting the labours of the months and signs of the zodiac, four continents, the four classical elements, and the four seasons. 

    £475

  10. FREEMAN, Arthur.

    Julia Alpinula, Pseudo-Heroine of Helvetia: How a Forged Renaissance Epitaph Fostered a National Myth.

    London, The Author, 2015.

    Julia Alpinula is a legendary Swiss heroine, whose pathetic fate in AD 69 inspired popular historians, dramatists, artists, and poets – including an infatuated Byron – over a period of more than two hundred years. Her very existence, however, was based entirely on a funerary inscription first published...

    £15

  11. NORMAND, Alfred Nicolas.

    L’architecture des nations étrangères. Etude sur les principales constructions du parc à l’Exposition...

    Paris, A. Morel, 1870.

    First edition. This is a presentation copy, inscribed on the half-title to the author’s friend Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris opera house that bears his name: ‘A son ami Ch. Garnier. Souvenir affectueux A. Normand’. The two men had known each other since they were both ‘pensionnaires’...

    £4000

  12. LEVEY, Michael.

    The later Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen … second edition.

    Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

    Revised second edition of Levey’s catalogue of the later Italian paintings in the Royal Collection, from Carracci to Zuccarelli and including the largest group of Canalettos in the world, a specially bound duplicate of Elizabeth II’s presentation copy.

    £475

  13. 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, preceded by the idea of a utopian town, ‘Universa’, where the futuristic ideal for a new society can be achieved and craftsmanship...

    £300

  14. 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

  15. CARTARI, Vincenzo.

    Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi ...

    Venice, Francesco Marcolini, 1556.

    First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients, the iconographic handbook of painters throughout Europe for the next 250 years.

    £800

  16. ALAI, Beatrice.

    Le miniature Italiane del Kupferstichkabinett di Berlino.

    Florence, Edizioni Polistampa, 2019.

    From the presentation leaf: ‘Bernard Quaritch Ltd is delighted to be a sponsor of this magnificent publication. We feel sure that our German founder, both as publisher of scholarly works and dealer in medieval manuscripts, would have been proud to support Beatrice Alai’s catalogue of the Italian...

    £75

  17. [SOCIETY OF JESUS.] 

    Les découvertes d’un bibliophile réduites a leur juste valeur.  Avec quelques cas de conscience curieux. 

    Strasbourg, L.F.  Le Roux, [1843]. 

    First edition of this scathing response to Busch’s anti-Jesuit Les découvertes d’un bibliophile, central to the highly polemical ‘affaire du Bibliophile’ which divided Strasbourg in 1843. 

    £375

  18. [ALMANACK.]

    Les etrennes a la rose, ou le rosier d’amour.

    Paris, Janet, [1804?].

    A charming literary almanack, or ‘rosebush of love’, collecting amatory poems using the motif of the rose, here bound in red silk strikingly embroidered in silver and dated with the French Revolutionary year ‘An XII’ (1804).

    £2500

  19. [CRIMEAN WAR.]

    Les militaires chrétiens a la guerre d’orient. Récompenses annuelles.

    Versailles, Beau jeune, [1856].

    First and only edition, rare, of this unusual cartonnage giftbook history of the Crimean War.

    £375

  20. [ALMANACK.]

    L’Esprit des chansonniers, extrain [sic?] des meilleurs poëtes.

    Paris, Le Fuel, [1826?].

    A very rare enamelled metal binding with an enchanting design of birds and squirrels, from the collection of the bookbinder, collector, and bibliographer Léon Gruel.

    £2750