Susanne Schulz-Falster Catalogue Eighteen - International League ...

Medical Books
17. [BOOKSELLER CATALOGUE – MEDICINE.]
Verzeichniss gebundener Bücher, enthaltend Medicin, Chirurgie,
Thierheilkunde, Pharmacie, Naturgeschichte und Naturlehre,
welche um beigesezte billige Preise bei dem Antiquar B. Seligsberg
in Bayreuth zu haben sind. Bayreuth, n.p. 1835 £320
8vo, pp. 60; original printed wrappers, title within decorative border,
wrappers with trading conditions on front inside wrapper and
advertisements on back wrapper; a fine copy with faint circular stamp to
upper wrapper.
First edition of a specialist antiquarian bookseller catalogue on medical and
natural history books. Seligsberg lists just over 1000 titles in alphabetical
order by author, giving title, size, number of volumes, binding and price.
The books are predominantly eighteenth century, with some earlier titles
included, such as a 1588 Hippocrates, 1616 Vesalius, etc.
Benedickt Seligsberg (1801–1876) was an antiquarian bookseller in
Bayreuth. According to local records he was of ill health and could not learn
a trade, so became an antiquarian bookseller, and survived to the ripe old
age of 75. His father, an itinerant trader, had requested that his son would
be given a trading patent, not normally granted to Jewish citizens, so that
he could help him in his business.
See Bayreuth, Epigraphische Datenbank, for information on Seligsberg.
Etching, Engraving, and Print-Making
18. BOSSE, Abraham. De la Maniere de Graver a l’Eau forte
et au Burin. Et de la Gravûre en Maniere noire. Avec la façon de
construire les Presses modernes, & d’imprimer en Taille-douce.
Nouvelle Édition, Augmentée de l’Impression qui imite les tableaux,
de la Gravure en maniere de crayon, & de celle qui imite le lavis.
Enrichie de vignettes & de vingt-une Planches en taille-douce. Paris,
Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1758 [vere ca 1773]. £2,500
Tall 8vo (196 x120 mm), engraved frontispiece, pp. xxxii (including
engraved dedication), 205, [3] privilege, with four finely engraved
vignettes (one after Cochin, and one after Bosse), 21 engraved folding
throw-out plates; contemporary full catspaw calf, spine decoratively gilt
in compartments, gilt-lettered spine label; expert repair at head of upper
joint; a fine crisp copy.
Second Jombert edition (and fourth edition in all) of Bosse’s Traité des
manières de graver en taille douce, with extensive additions on colour
printing, dated 1758 but in fact apparently printed in 1773 (see below).
Bosse’s treatise, the first manual of copperplate etching and engraving
and the printing of intaglio plates, was first published in French in 1645.
susanne schulz-falster rare books catalogue eighteen
It was aimed both at the professional engraver and at the amateur and
is extensively illustrated, with detailed engravings based on Bosse’s own
designs. A second edition of 1701 had contained revisions by LeClerc, the
third of 1745 those of the engraver Cochin.
This fourth edition adds two new plates by Louis-Marin Bonnet, the
inventor of the Crayon manner of colour printing and a separate chapter on
this method of colour printing. As for the date of publication, Arthur M.
Hind argues that due to a number of references in the text and the citing of
the ‘gravure’ article in the Encyclopédie the date of publication has to be some
fifteen years later than stated both on the title and the imprint.
In addition to a wealth of technical information, the work includes scenes
of the engraving studio and the copperplate press, and several wonderfully
informative step-by-step scenes of printmakers at work appear as engraved
headpieces at the start of each new chapter (one of them a copy of Bosse’s
large plate of 1643). As adaptations were made to all subsequent editions,
the work has remained an important introduction to print-making which is
of practical use to the printmaker even today.
Bigmore-Wyman, I, 72; Cicognara 255; see En Français dans le Texte, 92; see
Arthur M. Hind, ‘A note on C.N. Cochin’s second revision of Abraham Bosse’s
Traicté des manières de graver’, Burlington Magazine (1907), p. 390 ff.