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. [THE BOOK COLLECTOR.]

    A special Number to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Bernard Quaritch Ltd.

    The Book Collector, 1997.

    A collection of essays together recounting the history of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, published by The Book Collector to commemorate the firm’s sesquicentenary in 1997.

    £25

  2. 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

  3. THOMAS, Dylan, and Sir Peter Blake, illustrator.

    Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices.

    London: Apple Litho (Bristol) Ltd. for Enitharmon Editions and Queen Anne Press, 2013.

    De Luxe edition, number 61 of 100 copies with a signed print by Blake. This finely-produced edition was published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth and celebrates the culmination of over twenty-five years of work by Peter Blake, one of the founding fathers of British Pop Art. The...

    £975

  4. TOMS, William. 

    Thirty-six new original and practical designs for chairs, adapted for the Drawing and Dining Room, Parlour and...

    Bath, W. Evans, [c. 1830]. 

    A fine and rare furniture pattern book by William Toms, ‘carver in general’ at Bath. 

    £650

  5. [UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.]

    Subscription list for repairs to the College Chapel.

    [Oxford, c. 1860].

    A printed appeal from University College, signed by the Master Frederick Charles Plumptre (1796–1870), for funds to improve the interior of the Chapel, with an admission that ‘the College has no funds whatever to devote to such a purpose’. The list of subscribers contains some ninety names.

    £50

  6. VERTOGRADOV.

    За антиимпериалистическую солидарность, мир и прогресс! [For...

    Moscow, Izdatelstvo Plakat, 1975.

    A dramatic manifestation of the Soviet Union’s claim to be the foremost enemy of imperialism, and a vehement supporter of independence movements throughout the third world, as demonstrated here by the traditional dress of some of the figures in the background.

    £250

  7. VIAS, Balthasar de.

    In clarissimum virum Nicolaum Claudium Fabricium de Peiresc ... Epicedion.

    Marseille, Claude Garcin, 1642.

    Uncommon first edition of Balthasar de Vias’s elegant neo-Latin elegy commemorating the life of his friend the scholar, antiquary, and collector Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) of Aix-en-Provence, the most learned man of his time; our copy contains the extremely rare ‘Encomiasticon’...

    £3250

  8. VILLA, Antonio, and Giovanni Battista VILLA. 

    Dispositio systematica conchyliarum terrestrium et fluviatilium quae adservantur...

    Milan, ex typis Borroni et Scotti, 1841. 

    First edition of this catalogue of molluscs and shellfish in the collection of Antonio and Giovanni Battista Villa. 

    £275

  9. [VILLAMENA, Francesco].

    A street fight in Rome. A fan leaf drawing.

    [Italy, late 18th century].

    A fine fan leaf drawing, Italian school, late 18th century, copied from a print by Francesco Villamena of c. 1601. It depicts a street fight between Spanish and French factions in Rome with a view of the villa Mattei in the background. The original copper engraving by Villamena was dedicated to the patron...

    £2200

  10. VOLOSHIN, Maksimilian Aleksandrovich.

    O Repine [On Repin] …

    Moscow, “Ole-Lukoie”, 1913.

    First edition thus: three pieces written earlier in the year and published in journals on the work of Ilya Repin (1844–1930), often regarded as Russia’s national artist. At the end is an extract from a lecture (1885) by Landtsert on the painting ‘Ivan the Terrible and his Son’. Voloshin (1877–1932)...

    £450

  11. WAAGEN, Gustav Friederich.

    Verzeichnis der Gemälde-Sammlung des Königlichen Museums zu Berlin.

    Berlin, 1837.

    Sixth edition of Waagen’s catalogue of the Berlin picture gallery, with fifteen new paintings.

    £150

  12. [WALLPAPER.]

    A substantial album of printed wallpaper samples.

    France, 1923–24.

    A delightful sample album of French wallpapers printed by a variety of stencil, block and lithographic methods, on papers plain, coloured, textured, and silked.

    £4750

  13. [WHISTLER, Rex.] Brian North LEE.   

    The Bookplate Design of Rex Whistler. 

    [Pinner,] Private Libraries Association for the Bookplate Society, 1973. 

    First edition, one of 350 copies with a tipped-on rather than a printed frontispiece, a fully-illustrated catalogue of Whistler’s designs for the bookplates of Osbert Sitwell, Lady Diana Duff Cooper, Victor Rothschild, Pamela Countess of Lytton etc. 

    £350

  14. WISE, Francis.

    A Letter to Dr Mead concerning some Antiquities in Berkshire, particularly shewing that the White Horse, which gives...

    Oxford, Printed for Thomas Wood … 1738

    First editions. A Letter to Dr Mead was the first serious archaeological study of the Uffington White Horse. Francis Wise, Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University and later a friend of Samuel Johnson, contends that the horse, which he eulogises as a work of art, had Saxon origins, because...

    £350