The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, etc.: Half Year 1823

Good run of six monthly issues of this influential magazine, Third Series, Volume I, January to June 1823, bound in one volume.

A fascinating view of the taste of London high society in the year 1823.

Complete with 29 handcoloured engravings of fashion, landscapes, architecture and furniture, 6 engravings of needlework patterns, one engraved fold-out music score of a German waltz by Beethoven, and one engraved plate of a military trophy.

Each issue typically with two handcoloured architecture plates, two handcoloured London fashion plates, one handcoloured interior plate (furniture, curtains, etc.) and one needlework pattern.

The fashion plates unsigned but attributed to the Arbiter Elegantiarum (Thomas Uwins). The fashions include bonnets and hats, casual morning and promenade dresses as well as elegant evening wear and ball gowns, a few by Miss Pierpoint of 9 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, the others by anonymous designers. They show women lounging on a chaise longue playing an oud, wearing carriage clothes inside a coach, or morning dress on a wrought-iron balcony with a pet parrot.

The architecture plates mostly landscape scenes showing stately homes and gardens of the aristocracy by John Gendall. They include Cranburn Lodge in the royal hunting grounds, Queen Charlotte's house at Frogmore House (now the residence of Henry and Meghan), Richard Boyle's Palladian mansion Chiswick House, the Duke of Northumberland's Sion House with park designed by Capability Brown, and the interior of John Blade's Upper Show Room of ornamental glass and chandeliers at his shop in Ludgate Hill.

The three furniture plates show a luxurious Parisian faineante or idler, a huge raised sofa for several people to lounge on, a decorative cabinet bookcase, and a lady's work table for the sitting room.

Ackermann's Repository of Arts ran from 1809 to 1828. At four shillings an issue, it was an expensive magazine, aimed at the very richest of English society. In addition to the luxurious colour plates, the text offered travel writing, poetry, French fashion reports, art gallery reviews, literary criticism, society gossip, music reviews, general news and legal reports.

Each issue had several pages of advertisements at the back, fascinating ads for children's hair oil, macassar oil, playing cards, Amboyna mouth powder, Gifford's fruit lozenges, Kensington lace, Irish linen, art lithographs, etc.

Leather bindings with gilt title, year and volume number, spine with five raised bands rubbed and worn with 1cm loss to top and bottom, marble boards scuffed, marble endpapers, interior free of foxing, but a few finger smudges and spots, all plates with fine colouring under tissue guards. Both boards off and crudely reattached with blue tape.