Les Amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloé.

[Paris: Quillau], 1718. Engraved pictorial title page by Audran after Coypel (dated 1718), 29 engraved plates after original works by the Regent, Philippe, Duc d’Orleans including 15 double page & the suppressed “pieds a pieds” or “petits pieds” plate. Pp. [12], 163, (1). 12mo, a large margin copy being 16 x 10 cms, sumptously bound in the 19th century by Trautz-Bauzonnet of Paris in full crushed navy blue morocco, decorated in gilt with 4 gilt fillets and turtle dove tools in each corner of the boards, spine in compartments with lavish gilt decorations in each compartment and lettered and dated in gilt. In splendid condition with fine, rich impressions of the plates.||A fine copy of a famous work with an impeccable provenance:
1) shaped leather-gilt bookplate of Quentin Bauchart; 2) printed bookplate of Robert Shackleton (Bodley’s Librarian 1966-1979, most of whose collection is at the John Rylands Library); 3) Giles Barber’s copy, but without indication - the copy was bought from his library by the current owner. Various neat collectors’ notes and marks to front & rear endpapers.
Cf. Barber, Giles. The Panizzi Lectures. Daphnis and Chloe, the markets and metamorphoses of an unknown bestseller, British Library 1989.
The plates, except the frontispiece & ‘petits pieds’ plates, are famously after the original works by the Regent, Philippe, Duc d’Orleans. The merits of the plates have been much debated but their influence is beyond question.
Trautz-Bauzzonet was a bindery set up by a German bookbinder Georges Trautz (1808-1879) who arrived in Paris in 1830 and went to work with Antoine Bauzonnet. Bindings which were produced in Bauzonnet’s workshop before 1848 were signed Bauzonnet-Trautz but after that the names were switched presumably as Trautz took control of the bindery which became one of the leading master binderies of 19th century France due to its fine work and good materials. It is said that Trautz, famed for his gold tooling and inlay work, always varied his designs so that no two were alike. Sarah Prideaux writes about him in her ‘Modern Bookbindings’ noting his technical perfection and that in 1878 he was awarded the Legion of Honour, “the first time that any such distinction had been offered to a binder”. His fame grew “till it culminated in a sort of worship that is inconceivable outside of France”.|Cohen/De Ricci, 648-651; Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700 to 1914, Vol.1, p.10; Sarah Prideaux, Modern Bookbindings, p. 64ff.
A delicious copy of the ‘Regent edition’ with good margins