A remarkable volume containing three rare print series on architecture, architectural ornament and garden ornament, all published by the important Augsburg engraver and print publisher Johann Andreas Pfeffel the elder (1674-1748). The title pages for the Danreiter explicitly note that he engraved its plates.
Ad 1: First edition of Johann David Steingruber's first published architectural book, showing working drawings with plans, elevations and sections of town houses and palaces, mostly with scales. It includes several designs for a garden pavilion in an aristocratic park, lavish town houses for the haute bourgeois, and finally a ducal residence. Each design is shown in as much detail as possible. The grander houses are shown including streets and gardens. The Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach appointed Steingruber (1702-1787) court architect in 1734. In the course of his nearly 60-year tenure, he transformed the townscape of Ansbach following his own designs. He is best remembered for his playful Architektonisches Alphabet (1773), a remarkable series of designs in which each building has a ground plan based on a different letter in the alphabet.
Ad 2: First and only edition of a very rare ornamental garden pattern book (part 2 is especially rare) by the recently appointed court gardener and inspector of the Salzburg gardens, Franz Anton Danreiter (1695-1760). In 1728 Danreiter was appointed court gardener and inspector to related buildings by the ducal bishop of Salzburg. He translated Dezallier's La theorie et la pratique du jardinage into German, helping introduce French garden design to German-speaking countries. His own designs in the present work show more than 100 ornamental and fanciful planting patterns on 42 plates, many including fountains. This was his first and rarest model book with garden plans for parterres. They show that far from endlessly repeating the strict symmetrical canon of French Baroque garden design, Danreiter developed a never-ending variety of ornamental designs which herald the German rococo.
Danreiter served five successive bishops in Salzburg. Between 1727 and 1735 he also engraved a number of large-scale views of the city which represent a unique documentation of Salzburg in its 18th-century baroque glory.
Ad 3: Rare 18th century copy of selections from the equally rare Diverses corniches choisies sur l'anticque, originally issued in 30 plates ca. 1670 by the ornamentalist and painter George Charmeton (1623-1674). It shows ornamental designs from classical Roman entablatures (architraves, friezes and cornices).
The three works are printed on three different paper stocks, so there is no reason to suppose they were printed together. We have found no close match to the paper of the Steingruber: large monogram "4" and "G"(?) = --, cf. several marks in the group Heawood 3179-3231. The Danreiter must have been printed after 1728 and is on paper watermarked: shield bearing monogram (N superimposed on a reversed N?) = --, very close to Heawood 3220 (Augsburg and Ulm, 1731-1735). The paper of the Charmeton is unwatermarked. All were probably published before Peffel's death in 1748. The endpapers are watermarked: angel (with a staff or sword) in a wreath or flaming circle = "IHI", not found in the literature but mid- or late-18th-century in style.
With an early manuscript list of contents on the front pastedown and a circular black armorial(?) library stamp on the first leaf (only the word "BIBLIOTHEK" is legible). In very good condition, with only a crease across the corner of a couple leaves and an occasional minor spot. The paper sides are foxed, with a small water stain and a few chips, but the binding is otherwise also very good. Three rare architectural and ornamental print series, especially valuable for the garden layouts. Ad 1: Berlin Kat. 2006; Cicognara 676; VD18 90212959/VD18 13412477; WorldCat 839895051 (8 or 9 copies); not in BAL; Fowler; ad 2: Berlin Kat. 3332 (part 1, bound with part 2 of a different work); Millard coll. Northern European 18; WorldCat 558965569, 63518447, 635184286 (2 complete copies, 2 copies part 1 only); not in Springer, Tuinkunst; ad 3: Berlin Kat. 3929; WorldCat 320751757 (Czech description without location); cf. Guilmard, p. 68 (Charmeton, Diverses corniches, ca. 1670); not in BAL; Fowler.