Lot 260
Elaborate Inlaid Binding--Naturalists Pocket Book, The
Rare Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: 10 January 2007 at 11:00 GMT
Description
Ornamented with most Elegant Engravings, Illustrated by Corresponding Descriptions, Accompanied with an Almanack. London: G. Kearsley, [1797], 12mo, engraved title page with hand-coloured vignette, engraved hand-coloured frontispiece and 12 hand-coloured engraved plates, original pink card covers, preserved in an elaborately tooled green morocco slipcase with central cartouches of onlaid beige morocco enclosing a large figurative tool of 'Fortune' on upper cover and 'Justice' on the lower cover
Footnote
Note: An extremely rare eighteenth century natural history ephemeral work, illustrated with fine colour plates and preserved in its original elaborately tooled and onlaid slipcase
The Naturalists Pocket Book was published by the Fleet Street bookseller George Kearsley. First published the previous year, 1776, it does not appear to have survived this, the second issue. The high quality of both the engravings and the hand-colouring appear to have made the venture uneconomical at 3/6 plain or 6/- coloured.
The engravings by Inigo Barlow (fl. 1790's) include the Banksian Cockatoo, the Pigmy Opossum of New Holland, Birds of Paradise, Swallow-Tailed Butterfly, Parrots, Sea Anenomies and Cimelias.
The elaborate binding with its beige onlays and large allegorical figure tools has stylistic analogies with late eighteenth century Irish work. Representations of 'Fortune' and 'Justice' often appear on the elaborate 'Statute' bindings produced in Dublin in the late eighteenth century but this is probably a London binding. The only other copy of the 1796 issue located (Huntington) is also described as being in an elaborate inlaid binding.