Provenance: Pope Clement XI (born G. F. Albani), with the large engraved papal shield vignette and small circular Albani stamp on the title page; bound in contemporary calf, with the shield of Clement XI as pope on the front and rear covers, with…
The art and culture of early-modern Italy, especially Rome, are interests that inform all of my collections. A largely forgotten aspect of eighteenth-century Rome is that the papacy hosted the…
Provenance: Type designers Georg Trump and Hermann Zapf.
Der Wassermann has a legendary status among those interested in the letter arts. Each copy consists of four portfolios containing hundreds of examples of Schneidler’s…
Provenance: Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637), with his cipher stamped on the cover.
This extremely rare work is the first atlas devoted exclusively to the Americas, and contains the first maps of America to have appeared in any book of…
Translated by T. Smollett, 3 vols.
The focus of my recent collecting has been illustrated editions of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and I have many. But none mean more to me than this tiny three-volume edition.
Provenance: Surgeon and bibliophile François Rasse des Neux, both works signed and dated 1548; and Anthonii Hellin, with his very familiar motto, “et amicorum.”
The foremost scholar-priest of the sixteenth century and the best-selling author of…
Hermann Zapf was my boss in 1977, when he was appointed Cary Professor of Graphic Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I was curator of the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at that time. Years later he gave me this handsome account of his…
In January 1724, George I appointed Horatio Walpole (diplomat, politician, and younger brother of Sir Robert Walpole, the first British prime minister and uncle of the author, Horace) as an envoy extraordinary to the court of France. The first and…
Provenance: Dumbarton Oaks co-founder Mildred Bliss, with her bookplate.
I have lived to see many of my plans beautifully realized, but many more cruelly marred sometimes by false economy, sometimes by injudicious extravagance.