The Costume of China; The Punishments of China; The Costume of the Russian Empire; The Costume of Turkey; The Costume of Great Britain; The Costumes and Customs of Modern India.

London: William Miller, [& Edward Orme for Modern India],, 1800; 1801; 1803; 1804; 1804; c.1824 [but each with 1820s watermarks]. A fine set of these superb colour plate books "A most important series of books on costume" (Hardie, p. 151), this a particularly choice set - presented here in stylish period morocco bindings - of these famous colour plate books, issued by two of the most fashionable publishers of the era, William Miller and Edward Orme. The Costume of China has plates by the accomplished stipple engraver John Dadley, purportedly after originals by one Pu-Qua of Canton, acquired by the author, William Henry Mason, a major in the Royal Madras Fusiliers, while visiting the country around 1790. Many different trades and occupations are illustrated here. Dadley was also responsible for the plates in the pendant work, the celebrated and gruesome Punishments, which he nevertheless renders with elegance and delicacy. The splendid volume on the Russian Empire are also by Dadley and are based on the engravings in Johann Gottlieb Georgi's Beschreibung aller Nationen des Russischen Reichs (St Petersburg: C. W. Müller, 1776-8); they offer a superb panorama of the peoples of the Russian empire, from Finland and the Baltic countries to the steppes of Central Asia and Mongolia. In the preface to Costume of Turkey the publisher remarks that "the Drawings, from which these plates have been engraved, were made on the spot... each impression has been carefully coloured according to the original Drawing". The artist Gaëtan-Octavien d'Alvimart led a colourful life, travelling through Greece and Egypt, the Caribbean and Mexico, sometimes under the auspices of his old classmate, Napoleon. The volume on Great Britain was written and illustrated by William Henry Pyne, and the pages of his book are alive with lamplighters, dustmen and coal-heavers rubbing shoulders with knights of the Garter, peers and generals. These images are often reproduced and offer perhaps an unparalleled spectrum of life in Regency Britain. Finally, there is The Costumes and Customs of Modern India, with illustrations after the witty and charming Sir Charles D'Oyly (1781-1845), an accomplished amateur artist - he took lessons with the celebrated George Chinnery - son of a well-known nabob and himself an Indian administrator, with accompanying commentary by the Surgeon General of Bengal, Thomas Williamson. D'Oyly and Williamson's book is an important fund of information on British attitudes and mores in India. Provenance: from the library of Samuel James, Baron Waring (1860–1940), businessman and promoter of the decorative arts, founder of Waring & Gillow furniture manufacturers; with his armorial bookplates (dated 1927) in each volume, finely engraved by the bookplate specialist W. Phillips Barrett. Together 6 works, folio (360 x 253 mm). Contemporary dark red straight-grain morocco, spines with five low raised bands, gilt-lettered direct in second compartments, other compartments richly gilt, sides with frames of paired gilt fillets enclosing a panel of crisply-tooled foliate decoration and blind anthemion rolls, paired gilt fillets to edges and turn-ins, Spanish on Italian pattern marbled endpapers, gilt edges; Modern India in a closely matching but not uniform contemporary binding. A total of 295 hand-coloured aquatint or stipple-engraved plates as follows (one plate used as frontispiece in each volume other than India): China, 60 plates by John Dadley after Pu-Qua of Canton; Punishments of China, 22 plates by Dadley; Russian Empire, 73 plates by Dadley; Turkey, title vignette and 60 plates by Dalvimart; Great Britain, title vignette and 60 plates by William Pyne; India, 20 plates by J. H.Clark and C. Dubourg after Charles D'Oyly. Watermarks dating to the early 1820s. Colour at extremities of bindings expertly retouched, a few patches of darkening to morocco, minor foxing to endpapers, some offsetting and trivial finger-soiling to contents, plate XVII of Punishments with 8 cm closed tear not affecting image. An excellent set. Abbey 533; 532; 244; 370; 430 (Life); 440 (the Abbey copies often later editions, but collation and plate counts the same); Mildred Archer and Ronald Lightbown, India Observed: India as viewed by British Artists 1760-1860, 1982; Getty, China on Paper, 12 and 13.