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. 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

  2. ALBUM

    of watercolours and pencil drawings including roses and tulips, birds, insects, 12 architectural scale drawings, and two...

    England, mid-eighteenth century?

    An attractive sketchbook, seemingly the work of an unidentified architect or decorative artist.

    £2250

  3. 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

  4. [BOLOGNA.] 

    Delle oggetti di belle arti nel famoso Tempio di S. Paolo in Bologna e delle vicissitudini di esso brevi notizie. 

    Bologna, ‘nella stamperia di San Tommaso d’Aquino’, 1831. 

    First edition of this detailed description of the Baroque masterpieces in the church of San Paolo Maggiore (or San Paolo Decollato) in Bologna, among them works by Guercino and Cavedoni. 

    £275

  5. BURNE-JONES, Edward.

    The Little Holland House Album … with an Introduction & Notes by John Christian.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2024

    The Little Holland House Album was compiled by Edward Burne-Jones in about 1858-9 for Sophia, Mrs Dalrymple, the youngest of the seven celebrated Pattle sisters who played such an important role in mid-Victorian cultural life. Their centre was Little Holland House in Kensington where another of the...

    £75

  6. BUSTEED, Henry Elmsley. 

    The Serampore Portrait.  Is it Madam Grand? 

    Calcutta, Thacker, Spink, & co., 1903. 

    First edition of a study probing the identity of a portrait then displayed at the Library of the Baptist Mission College at Serampore, India.  The portrait in question, attributed to the German neo-classical painter Johann Zoffany who was frequently patronised by British royalty and who had a...

    £125

  7. CARTARI, Vincenzo. 

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

    Venice, per Francesco Marcolini, 1556. 

    First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients. Cartari concentrated on the iconography of the gods, explaining their guises and detailing their several attributes. His book was expressively written to aid artists, painters, and sculptors to...

    £800

  8. 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

  9. CORBOULD, Henry (illustrator). 

    [Cover title:] Illustrations to Theodric, by Thomas Campbell, from designs by Henry...

    London, Edward Lacey, 1829. 

    Unrecorded, a suite of five engravings for Thomas Campbell’s Theodric (1824), though seemingly not intended for inclusion in any particular edition. 

    £650

  10. [COSTUME.]

    6 Blätter Altenburger Trachten.

    Altenburg, Schnuphase’sche Buchhandlung, [c. 1857].

    Charming Altenburg costume plates, lacking at least one plate.

    £150

  11. 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

  12. DASSIER, Jean and Jacques-Antoine. 

    ‘An Explanation of Dassier’s Medals being a Representation of a Series of Events taken...

    London, c. 1795–1800. 

    An exceptionally fine illustrated manuscript, with drawings after the series of sixty medals of Roman history from Romulus to the Age of Augustus produced by Jean Dassier and his son in 1740-1743.  The drawings are executed with considerable finesse, adding detailed elements not clearly visible...

    £6500

  13. [DEFOE, Daniel.]

    The Life and strange surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner …

    London: Printed for John Stockdale … 1790.

    First Stockdale edition, a unique copy, augmented with an evocative suite of original illustrations.

    £7500

  14. DIEDO, Antonio.

    Sui Soffitti memoria.

    Venice, Alvisopoli, 1838.

    New edition, dedicated to Count Antonio Trissino, as copies of the original edition were unprocurable.

    £45

  15. 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

  16. [DOVES PRESS.] 

    Pervigilium Veneris. 

    Hammersmith, ‘printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press,’ 1910. 

    One of 150 copies on paper of the elusive Pervigilium Veneris, in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe). 

    £950

  17. ERNST, Max.

    Une Semaine de Bonté ou les sept éléments capitaux. Roman. Premier [–Dernier] Cahier …

    Paris, Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1934.

    First edition, no. 706 of 800 copies on papier Navarre from a total edition of 816.

    £4500

  18. FARINGTON, Susan Maria (illustrator). 

    The 104th Psalm.  Illustrated by Susan Maria Ffarington.  Worden. 

    London,  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, [c. 1867]. 

    The Faringtons or Ffaringtons were an ancient family of Worden Hall, Leyland, Lancashire, with a substantial family archive.  Susan Maria (1808–1894) edited The Farington Papers for the Chetham Society in 1856, and made other contributions to local history, but this unusual panorama seems to have...

    £650

  19. FIORILLO, Johann Dominicus.

    Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste, von ihrer Wiederauflebung bis auf die neusten Zeiten ...

    Göttingen, bei Johann Georg Rosenbusch, 1798 [and Johann Friederich Rower], 1801-1805.

    First edition. Fiorillo began as a painter, studying in Rome and Bologna, but turned to art history and became a professor at the University of Gottingen and colleague of Lichtenberg, in 1781. His erudite survey of the art of painting throughout Europe was among the first to make use of medieval documentary...

    £600