First Folio
Purveyors of Fine and Rare Books in many fields since 1980. Specialists in Fine Bindings and Illustrated Books.
Membership(s): ABAA, ILAB
Racinet, M. A.
Racinet, M. A. Le Costume Historique Cinq Cents Planches, Trois Cents ed Couleurs, or et Argent, Deux Cents en Camaieu (6 Volumes)
$4,500.00
Paris: Libraire de Firmin-Didot Et Cie, 1888. “Petite” first edition. Six volumes. Square 8vo. Illustrated with 500 plates, 300 in vivid chromolithography printed by Didot, and 200 in camaieu (monochrome) – complete. Bindings marked Brentano’s Paris. Bound in half royal blue crushed morocco with gold-veined marbled sides and marbled endpapers, t.e.g., the spine richly gilt with floral ornaments. Fine. ( One monochrome plate in Vol II with half-inch spot due to cohesion with resulting small hole in facing page not affecting any text; also a very small brown spot on lower edge of a page not affecting text).
“This edition… is known as the small or ‘petite’ edition. The same text and plates were published at the same time in a larger edition, folio size, usually described as the “grande edition”. The only difference is in the size of the page and color of the paper. Plates are printed from the same lithograph plates, but in the ‘grande edition’ they are on titled paper. (Hiler & Hiler, p. 732.)
Quite a handsome production of an important work in fine bindings.
Hiler 732; Colas 2471; Lipperheide 93.
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