Autographs, Documents & Manuscripts

[FORTIFICATION]. HOOFF, Cornelis Christiaan van. Grondbeginselen der vestingbouw, volgens de verschillende manieren van versterken van Pagan, Vauban en Coehoorn. Geconstrueerd getekend en beschreven door C C van Hooff.
[The Hague], 1796. Folio. With a calligraphic title-page and 19 folding drawings (mostly about 32.5 x 51 cm, 6 longer: 78 to 138 cm, the longest assembled from 2 pieces before drawing) with 45 numbered figures, showing fortification plans and sections in black and red ink with coloured washes. With an 1857(?) photograph of a (ca. 1795?) miniature oval portrait of the author and 4 documents concerning the manuscript and the author's family (1933-1965), all loosely inserted. Contemporary half, tanned sheepskin, gold-tooled spine. [1], [1 blank], 81, [1 blank], [1], [3 blank] pp. plus 19 integral blank ll. with drawings tipped onto them. Full description

[HORSES - MILITARY]. Anecdoten van paarde kenners, paarde liefhebbers, ruijters en ross-kammers. Naar waarheid en eijge ondervinding opgesteld. Door een gepensioneerd cavallerie officier.
[The Netherlands, ca. 1815]. Folio (38 x 24 cm). Manuscript on paper written in brown ink in a readable Latin hand, with the title on p. 72, illustrated with 30 small watercolour drawings of horses mounted on the leaves (mostly about 8.5 x 11 cm), and a washed pen drawing with 5 caricature figures before a monument (9.5 x 16 cm), mounted above the dedication. Half vellum (1930s?), gold-tooled spine. [4 blank], 248, 251-254, 257-267, [9 blank] pp. Full description

HOUBRAKEN, Arnold. De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen. ... Den tweeden druk.
The Hague, Johannes Swart, Cornelis Bouquet, Mattheus Gaillard, 1753. With engraved frontispiece, engraved author's portrait and 47 engraved plates bound in a separate plates volume.
With: (2) GOOL, Johan van. De nieuwe schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: ...
The Hague, for the author, 1750-1751. With engraved author's portrait and 22 engraved plates (1 folding). Lacking engraved frontispiece. 2 works (in 3 and 2 parts), bound in 11 text volumes (8vo interleaved with 4to, 25.5 x 20 cm) and 2 plate volumes (8vo interleaved with small folio, 28 x 20.5 cm). Uniform late 18th-century half sheepskin parchment (ad 1) and half vellum (ad 2). Full description

[AUTOGRAPH]. HUMBOLDT, Alexander von. [Autograph letter to Le Chevalier de Rossel, director of the Dépôt des Cartes of the Paris Académie des Sciences].
[Paris, 1818?]. 4to (23 x 18.5 cm) Letter in black ink on laid paper, in Humboldt's somewhat cramped but still legible hand. Formerly folded for posting, with the address written on the otherwise blank final page and with traces of a paper seal. [1], [3 blank] pp. Full description

[ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT - ALTAR CANON]. Accipiendo in manibus hostiam dicat[!].... Initium Sancti Evangelii secundum Joannem. ... Cibavit illum dominus pane vitæ et intellectus.
[Belgium?], [ca. 1790?]. Three illuminated manuscript wall panels in matching style, forming a three-part altar canon lettered in blue and red ink on parchment (one 47.5 x 57 cm & two 31 x 22 cm; image sizes 46 x 54.5 cm & 29.5 x 21 cm), the larger stretched over a wooden frame and each of the smaller two over a wooden panel. All three panels meticulously and finely lettered in the style of roman printing types with 1 line in italic capitals, all 12 initials and some of their decoration in gold. All three panels richly illuminated around and between the text blocks with a gold background and extensive gold highlights, the illumination including decorated cartouches. The principal scenes at the head (miniatures in a wide variety of colours) show the Last Supper, Saint John the Evangelist and Christ washing his apostles feet; the central scenes at the foot (ink and ink wash drawings, probably emblematic, that on the large panel in grey and those on the small panels in red) show a lamb and cross on an altar, 4 standing figures with long staffs around a table with a platter (of bread?: some of the figures are eating something) and herald angels before a kneeling figure (it doesnt look like a shepherd or the Virgin Mary). Full description

[INCUNABLE - GERMANY]. [12 leaves from: Statuta synodalia herbipolensia].
[Würzburg, Georg Reyser, ca. 1486]. Folio. Printed in red and black in rotunda type (32 lines; printed area: 18 x 12 cm; type: 112a). With illustrations cut from 19th- or 20th-century reproductions of early woodcuts (ca. 21 x 14 cm) pasted on the front (Annunciation) and back pastedown (Christophorus, with the year "cccc xx tercio").. Later bound in two leaves from a 13th-century vellum theological manuscript, rubricated and decorated with alternating red and blue initials with penwork. [12] ll. Full description

[FRENCH INDIA - MANUSCRIPT]. Des castes Indiennes.
Karaikal, 11 April [1743]. 4to (ca. 24 x 18.5 cm). Manuscript written in dark brown ink on beige laid paper. Blue mottled stiff paper wrappers. [23], [1 blank] pp. Full description

[PHOTOGRAPHY - INDIA]. [W. RAHN (photographer).] [Album with photographs of the Tirah Expedition].
Including:
- Key [manuscript identifying sitters in 1 photograph in the album]. 2 loose leaves.
- [Manuscript list of captions to 10 photographs in the album]. 1 leaf.Kirkee (Pune, India), Sappers and Miners' Press, [1898]. Folio album (40 x 33 cm). A photo album with 53 photographic prints on 12 paperboard leaves, hinged to stubs with 3 cords. Including 9 large albumen prints from 21 x 26.5 cm to 13.5 x 29 cm, 43 gelatin silver prints from 12 x 18 cm. to 9 x 10.5 cm., and a loosely inserted large albumen print 21 x 28.5 cm on a similar paperboard support. Contemporary cloth with closing straps. Manuscripts loosely inserted in the album.
(2) PARK, Superintendent. 1898. Catalogue of photographs by Sergeant A.J. Clarke R.E. taken during Tirah Expedition, 1897-1898.
[Kirkee (Pune, India), Sappers and Miners' Press, 1898]. Small folio (22 x 14.5 cm), [4] pp. With a lithographed title-page. Loosely inserted in the album. Full description

[MANUSCRIPT]. JOFFROY, Joannes Baptista (Jean-Baptiste). Daegelyksche aenteekening van alle de goederen te verwen komende bij Joannes Baptista Joffroy begonst 1734.
[Mechelen (Malines, Belgium), 1 April 1734-31 August 1759]. Folio (32.5 x 21 cm). Manuscript journal of accounts in dark brown ink on paper, written in Dutch in an upright gothic hand, with each page ruled in double and single lines to make 4 or 5 columns and up to 22 rows, decorated with hundreds of pen flourishes, three forming pictures of birds as tailpieces and with a decorative cross to begin 1750 (some other years with a simpler cross), a couple headings with additions in red. Contemporary vellum. [268] pp. Full description

JONG, Jacobus de. Geschriften.
Noordwijk-Binnen, 1761. Oblong folio (21 x 33 cm). Manuscript calligraphic copybook in brown ink on paper, with a calligraphic title-page followed by sample texts (mostly from the Old and New Testament) in Dutch in a roundhand script with decorative flourishes, and verses by Jacob Cats on the outside of the first and last leaves, the last illustrated with a penwork father, son and a large fish eating a small fish. Side-stitched, with the first leaf and last leaf serving as wrappers. [31] ll. Full description