Rare books from White Fox Rare Books and Antiques

Paris: Desaint et Saillant, 1755. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Oudry, Jean-Baptiste; 42 Engravers, Including Cochin, Tardieu, Prevost, Chedel, Lempereur, Etc.. Elephant Folio - over 15. 1755 - 1759. 4 volumes, 420 by 285 mm or 16.5 by 11 inches. With 276 (1 extra) illustrated plates designed by Oudry (1685 - 1755), as well as half-titles, engraved title pages, head and tailpieces. Extra plate is the second version of the plate found by page 112 of Vol 3, for the Fable CLXXII, "Le Singe et le Leopard".) Bound in is the first state of the plate, which did not have the word "Leopard" on the banner. Included, but not presently bound, is the second state, with "Leopard" on the banner. Contemporary calf rebacked preserving spines, covers panelled in gilt. Spines tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments containing urn motif, with red morocco lettering labels. Marbled endpapers. Some very intermittent spotting. Faint dampstain to front blanks of Vols 1 and 2. Hinges strengthened, rebacked. Some… Read More

Augsburg: Steiner, 1529. First Edition Thus. Vellum. Fine. 4to. 121 full-page woodcut illustrations, plus two half-page woodcuts and title page illustration, for a total of 124. 100 unnumbered leaves (leaves Miii & Miiii apparently provided from another edition) + 3 leaves from an unrelated work bound in at the end. Lipperheide 2043. Not in Adams. Extra leaves appear to be from 1527 Steiner edition. Cf Adams V339. Later vellum by Bouillet, gilt spine. Yapp edges. All edges gilt. Title within woodcut border with half-page pictorial woodcut vignette. Covers bowed. Minor foxing, soiling and browning. A few minor marginal tears. Overall, tight and generally fresh and sound internally.

Frankfurt am Mayn: [Georg Raben, with Sigmund Feyrabends und Simon Huters], 1566. Third edition. Pigskin. Very Good. Small folio, 34 by 21 cm, 13 by 8 inches. [6], ccxliii, [3], [4], lxxxi. Early coloring sets this copy apart. Abundant woodcuts attributed to Josse Amman and Feyerabend. Brunet IV 1471. The illustrations depict, of course, jousting tournaments, but also banquets, music-making, courtship and festivities that went along with the tournaments and military marches and activity that were the real impetus for the tournament and its particular culture. In addition many of the decorative devices and many coat-of-arms are colored. This is an early history of tournaments, and surely the most comprehensive on the topic at the time of its appearance and still a meaty work on the topic, notwithstanding some inaccuracies. As might be expected, the illustrations show everyone in typical mid-sixteenth century attire regardless of actual period. Remarkable about the color is the variety of… Read More

1919-1921. Half Morocco. . Fine. Manuscript containing 84 original mounted watercolors depicting the Franco-Prussian War. 4to. 29 by 24 cm. 16 leaves with text and painted flags of all the German regiments in the war, followed by the 84 watercolors, each with a title written onto a separate sheet preceding it. At the end, a four page table of contents. While the illustrations are in a sense celebrating the German army and its individual regiments, the paintings are also undeniably beautiful, and in their impressive detail, come off as highly realistic and honest. The artist, about whom nothing is known beyond this body of work, showed meticulous care in rendering uniforms and weaponry, and he was also clearly an accomplished equestrian artist, capturing the horse in its power, motion, attitudes and terror. One would have to think that the author must have had an intent to publish this collection, but there is no evidence that this ever occurred, or that this was indeed an actual aspiration.… Read More

1914(?)-1915/6. Hardcover. Very Good. 8vo. 22.5 by 18 cm. 270 pp., almost all with one or more colorfully painted cartoons and caricatures depicting the early part of World War One, beginning in 1914 and possibly all the way through 1915. The album was made with a notebook with ruled lined paper. On most pages, the lines have been covered over, and are at most barely visible. One of the specific events alluded to is the sinking of the Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy by one German submarine, an event which occurred in September, 1914. The sinking of the Lusitania and chemical warfare are alluded to well into the album, which brings the album into the middle of 1915. It is possible the album runs into 1916 but not by much. The jingoistic, and non-subtle analysis manifest in the cartoons, does not give way to a weariness, a questioning, or disillusionment which would certainly have asserted itself later on in the war. The cover has a raised title, not fully legible anymore; from what can be made out,… Read More

London, etc., 1891-1893. Pebbled Cloth. Very Good. Three years, and 36 issues, of a Pre-Raphaelite-inspired manuscript magazine, spanning 1891 through 1893, with a major contributor Gerald Moira (1867-1959). The majority of contributors were women, as were the two other most represented contributors, the sisters Nora Butson and Helen Susan Strange Butson, who also acted as the editor of the magazine. With about 250 full-page original artworks, mostly watercolors, and countless other vignettes, text illustrations, border and headpiece or endpiece decoration and illustration. This magazine began in 1884 and continued until 1893, and thus we have here the final three years. (The volume numbers, which correspond to whole calendar years with these issues, must have not initially.) While nothing is known about the origins of the magazine, one can not but think its contributors were emulating the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of a prior generation or to be precise, formed in the 1850s, a bit over… Read More

London: Allen & West, 1796. First Edition. Full Morocco. Very Good. 4to. 25.5 by 20 cm. 217, [1] pp. Illustrated with engraved title and 100 humorous hand-colored plates (on 99 leaves), 3 of which are folding, by Isaac Cruikshank, a contemporary of Rowlandson and father of George and Robert Cruikshank. Caricatures and early cartoons here could be sharp, acerbic or gentle. Many glow with whimsy, and all should bring a smile to virtually anyone. Full blue morocco, Riviere & Son binding. With elaborate dentelles and spine decoration. Gilt edges. Rubbed spots on joints, and the slightest fatigue to leather on the spine. One minor closed tear within. Age toning to leaves, which are otherwise clean. A comic masterpiece in a rare true first edition.

Philadelphia: Anthony Finley, 1826. First edition thus. Full Morocco Casing. Very Good Plus. Scarce pocket version of Finley's atlas! With fifteen hand-colored maps. 15 by 12 cm case. The maps open up to be 54 by 44 cm. Maps are of North America; the United States at the time; Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont; Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island; New York; Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware; Virginia and Maryland; the Carolinas and Georgia; Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama; Kentucky and Tennessee; Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and part of the Michigan territory; Missouri and part of the Arkansas territory; Florida and elevation of mountains; the West Indies; and South America. The leather case has moderate soiling throughout, and a crack with a dry patch along the joint, or top of the flap. The gilt lettering is all legible. The first and last map are soiled, with the first, or North American map, more heavily so. Otherwise, the maps are generally bright and clean and in fine… Read More

Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai (The Society for International Cultural Relations), 1937. First edition. Leporello. Hardcover boards, paper pastedown.. Very Good. The Japanese photobook equivalent of a Leni Riefenstahl movie! Deemed "arguably the high point of both the Japanese propaganda and the modernist photo book" by Parr and Badger in "The Photobook: A History". Oblong folio, 27 by 30 cm. 64 pp., or 32 double-page back-to-back photomontages configured as an accordion fold-out, and a deliberate attempt to adapt the traditional Japanese pillow book to a more modern usage. Text (captions) in English, French and German. The photographers involved were also staff photographers of the Japanese photo magazine, "Nippon". The black and white photos have an extraordinary dynamism and three dimensionality achieved by the artful juxtapositions, and there is a cumulative power to the whole enterprise. Just as the photos themselves are able to convey movement, the message of the whole is that Japan itself was… Read More

Amsterdam, 1732 or 1733. The panorama or concertina was made, we believe, in 1732 or 1733, or close to that date. The silver "shraubthaler" or outer casing we assume was made separately, at a later date, but not long afterward.

Leiden: Isaac Severinus, 1712. Full Morocco. Very Good. A large paper edition of this classic on self-defense and mano a mano combat. 4to. 27 by 21.5 cm. Title, [2], 71 copper engraved plates, followed by five folding sheets, printing only on rectos, with explanations of the plates -- the purpose of the folds is to allow for the explanations to jut out and thus be readable while viewing the particular plate(s). The work was first published in 1674 in French. This edition is particularly desirable because of its being large paper. (We could find no copies, in book form, of this edition on OCLC, and only a single copy of an earlier edition in French, at the British Library.) Bound in an elaborately decorated Baroque ornamented, or Grolieresque, full crimson crushed morocco binding by Morley Brothers of Oxford. The binding decoration includes interlocking strap work in olive, green and black morocco, gilt dots, gilt floral vine ornamentation and ornamental scrolls, panelled-like turn-ins, etc. With silk… Read More

October 25 to November 1, 1996. Hardcover. Leatherette. . Very Good. 4to. 28 by 21 cm. About 80 pages with substantial illustrated content, all original sketches, of varying degrees of finish, with the media being pencil or pen-and-ink, with occasional watercolor fill-ins. While some of the drawings are very obviously dashed off to retain some visual notion for later application, there are some drawings that do read as quite finished, or fully satisfying visually, whatever Knight's state of mind about them at the time. And most of the illustrations are about fashion week, the models, the designers, the fashionistas, the Society clientele, and the other inhabitants of the fashion world. The pleasure to be derived from the sketchbook is how so magnficently Knight captures the milieu. He is less concerned with the fashions themselves than the players at the event and the theatricality of the whole thing. Here we see so many with dangling cigarettes, big sunglasses, studied nonchalant… Read More

Paris: Chez Bozérian. Chez Déterville. Didot Jeune, 1794. Full Calf. Very Good. Stunning color plates accompanying three works contained in this large paper edition. Folio, 33 by 25.5 cm. 153 pp. 12 color plates, including frontis, printed in color and finished by hand. Ten of these by Le Mire after Charles Eisen -- these relate to the principal work, "Le Temple de Gnide" and also "Céphise et lAmour". The two other plates are by Thomas after Le Barbier and these accompany "Arsace et Isménie". Scarce -- we could locate no other copies of the large paper edition, and only three of the regular issue, on OCLC First Search -- at the BNF, North Carolina, and Calouste Gulbenkan, in Portugal. The calf is polished, with gilt decoration of a band of Greek key and a rinceaux band within that one. On the spine the decoration includes a small hunt trophy motive and a bouquet in a basket, both of which are repeated. Condition: binding with some scuffs and scratching, and gilt border decoration slightly rubbed.

Hardcover. Paper pastedown on boards. . Very Good. Spectacular groupings of flowers, all brightly colored and finely shaded. N.d., early 19th Century. Oblong, 24 by 33 cm. Each of the paintings is framed with blue paper strips, as typical. Condition: as inevitable with the brittle, fragile pith paper, some tears, holes and stains; in our judgment and experience, lighter by the norm, or put another way, not disconcerting ever. The album binding itself has abrasions and wear, but again, this is lighter than what usually encounters with such album covers.

Wrappers. String. . Very Good. 72 original watercolors, all whimsical and colorful. N.d., circa 1910s. 38 by 29 cm. Cover and first page with Japanese calligraphy, hand-written. Following are leaves with paintings, all by hand. Contents only on top side of leavest throughout, and no text after two first two leaves. Opens vertically -- bound on top. Haori jackets are overcoats worn over kimonos. That said, the paintings all work as artwork on their own. Their style is deliberately naive, as befitting a children's book's illustrations, which these could across-the-board be. Here children, often a little chunky, are cavorting, playing, frolicking. Musicians, actors, fisherman, farmers, aristocrats people other paintings. The adult subjects, among other things, might be praying, riding horses which are more like merry-go-round mounts, or socializing. Other animals appearing include turtles, fish, birds, dogs, mice, sometimes anthropormorphically presented. Backdrops are occasional, but include Mount Fuji,… Read More