Highlights

BATTUS, Carolus. Secreet-boeck van veele diversche en heerlijcke konsten in veelderley materien, met veel remedien tegen de innerlijcke en uytterlijcke gebreken der menschen. ... Verrijckt met verscheyden secreten van wijnen, verwen ende schrijf-konsten.
Amsterdam, Jan Jacobsz. Schipper, 1661. 12mo. Contemporary vellum. 573, [3] pp. Full description

BATTY, Robert. Scenery of the Rhine, Belgium and Holland, from drawings by Captn. Batty, of the Grenadier Guards F.R.S. Member of the Imperial Russian Order of St. Anne.
London, Robert Jennings, 1826. Large folio. With 62 steel-engraved plates, frontispiece and tail-piece included. Each plate is present two times, in different states. All plates are after drawings by the author engraved by among others W.R. Smith, E. Finden, R. Wallis, W. Woolnoth, and others. Contemporary half red morocco. [189] ll. Full description

BELON, Pierre. L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux, avec leurs descriptions, & naifs portaicts retirez du naturel: escrite en sept livres.
Paris, Guillaume Cavellat (colophon: printed by Benoit Prévost), 1555. 7 parts in 1 volume. Folio. With a woodcut portrait on the back of the title page (apparently of the dedicatee King Henri II, though copied in other books as a portrait of the author), large woodcuts of the skeletons of a man and a bird on pp. 40-41, plus 158 woodcuts (157 birds, 1 bat) in the text. Contemporary blind- and gold-tooled calf (rebacked, with the original backstrip laid down). [28], 381, [1], [2 blank] pp. Full description

BERLAIMONT, Noël de. Colloquia et dictionariolum septem linguarum, Belgicae, Anglicae, Tevtonicae, Latinae, Italicae, Hispanicae, Gallicae. ... Colloques ou dialogues, avec un dictionaire en sept language, Flamen, Anglois, Allemat, Latin, Italien, Espaignol & Francois, ... Colloquien of t samensprekingen, met eenen vocabulaer in seven spraken, Neerduytsch, Engelsen, Hoochduytsch, Latijn, Italiens, Spaens, ende Fransois, van nieu verbetert ende vermeerdert van vier colloquien, seer nut ende profitelik tot der coopmanschap, reyse, ende anderen handelinghen.
Liège, Henricus Hovius, 1610. Oblong 16mo in 8s (9 x 12 cm). Contemporary sheepskin parchment. [400] pp. Full description

BERQUEN, Robert de. Les merveilles des Indes Orientales et Occidentales ou Nouveau traitté des pierres precieuses & perles, ...
Paris, Christophe Lambin, 1669 (colophon 1668). 4to. With an engraved portrait of Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans facing the dedication. Contemporary gold-tooled, mottled calf. [8], 152 pp. Full description

[BERSE, Gaspar, Francis XAVIER etc.]. Epistolae Indicae et Iapanicae de multarum gentium ad Christi fidem, per Societatem Iesu conversione.
Louvain, Rutger Velpius, 1570.
With: (2) GARETIUS, Johannes. De sanctorum invocatione liber...
Ghent, Gislenus Manilius, 1570.
2 works in 1 volume. 8vo. Ad 1 with the title-page in a frame built up from fleurons, and a woodcut publisher's device on last blank, ad 2 with the title-page in a frame built up from fleurons, the woodcut coat-of-arms of Cunerus Petri (bishop of Leeuwarden) on the back of the title-page and on the last leaf a woodcut printer's device within a frame built up from fleurons.
Contemporary limp vellum sewn on 3 leather supports laced through the joints, with the manuscript title on the spine, leather ties, red edges. [24], “361”[=316], [20] pp.; [16], 103, [9] ll. Full description

[BIBLE - DUTCH]. Biblia, dat is de gantsche Heylige Schrifture, vervattende alle de canonijcke boecken des Ouden en des Nieuwen Testaments.
Including: De boecken genaemt apocryphe ...
Leiden, widow and heirs of Johannes Elzevier, 1663. 3 parts in 1 volume. Large folio (44.5 x 28 cm). With 3 letterpress title-pages (the first in red and black, and each with the same Elzevier woodcut tree device with "non solus"), a complete series of 6 double-page engraved maps (the Nicolaes Visscher maps, 5 published ca. 1657 and including the world map added ca. 1663), without the engraved title-page (as usual). Further with numerous woodcut initials and tailpieces. Contemporary elaborately gold-tooled red morocco over bevelled wooden boards, sewn on 8 supports with corresponding raised bands on the spine, with grand silver fittings (with the hallmarks of an unknown silversmith) dated on the inside of one of the clasps "1665", gold-tooled board edges and turn-ins. Further with gilt, painted, and elaborately gauffered and decorated edges; the fore edge shows the coat-of-arms of Jeremias de Bont with some floral decorations, these floral decorations can also be found on the top and bottom edges. The boards show a very intricate gold-tooled symmetric design of ribbons with small geometric stamps and with ornamental curling stamps - better known as "petit fers" - within the different parts of the bigger pattern. The binding contains 4 ornamental corner pieces on each board and two catch plates (front board) and two hinge plates (back board) connected by two decorated massive silver clasps, engraved on the inside "Ieremias de Bont (top) and "1665" (bottom). [22], "368" [= 370]; [13], "167" [= 168]; [2], 77 ll. Full description

[BINDING - EMBROIDERED]. Esercizio da premettersi dalle donne in stato di gravidanza per conseguire da dio per l'intercessione del glorioso San Torello protettore insigne l'essenzione da tutti i pericoli e felicità nel prossimo parto.
Florence, Stamperià Arcivescovile alla Croce Rossa, 1822. 8vo. Beautifully embroidered contemporary pink silk over paperboards, with flowers and a border along the edges of both sides, and the initials "CM" in centre of front cover, preserved in a modern marbled slipcase. 39 pp. Full description

[BINDING - GHELARDI SCOLOPI, Orazio Antonio]. La pace tra la virtu', la gloria, ed amore. Componimento drammatico da cantarsi in occasione delle faustissime nozze del nobil uomo signor Silvestro Michele Arnolfini con la nobil donzella signora Beatrice Luisa Bernardini dedicato alla medesima.
Lucca, Giuseppe Rocchi, 1767. Small 4to (17 x 14 cm). Contemporary red velvet, embroidered with silver and gold thread and white and yellow silk (each board with an emblematic image: a crowned mirror[?] showing a hand planting a flag, perhaps intended as the groom's hand on the front and the bride's hand on the back), sewn without supports through 3 holes, brocade paper endpapers (grape vines and large flowers, white on a copper background), green silk ribbon marker. 24 pp. Full description

[BINDING VOC - MANUSCRIPT - FRENCH - VERNET, Jacob]. [Instruction chrétienne, ou catechisme familier; avec quelques prières a l'usage des petits enfans].
[The Netherlands?, ca. 1780?]. 4to (ca. 19 x 15 cm). Manuscript in French, written in black ink on paper, in a neat cursive script by one hand. With chapter divisions (numbered 39-75) and headings. The text is written upside down in relation to the binding. Most leaves show an identical watermark, depicting a lion rampant on a pedestal with "Vryheyt" in a crowned ring with "Pro Patria Eiusque Libertate" and the letters "CR" below, which is very close to Heawood 3149 (date: 1753). Late 18th-century gold-tooled brown mottled calf, sewn on 5 supports, bound by the so-called Acorn-and-Foliage Tool Bindery in Amsterdam (Storm van Leeuwen). Both boards show the large gold-tooled monogram of the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC as a centre piece sandwiched between the gold-tooled date "Anno 1780", all within a gold-tooled floral frame with floral corner pieces in the inside corners, spine gold-tooled in six compartments, red sprinkled edges. [28] ll. Full description