Guide to French Armorial Bindings
Manual de l'amateur de reliures amoriées françaises.
Paris: Ch. Bosse, 1924-1938.
Price: $7,500.00
About the item
First edition. With 2,685 "planches," many extending to several leaves, reproducing some 10,000 armorial stamps, white on black. 4to (270 x 214 mm). Guide to French Armorial Bindings. Red half morocco, contents elaborately gilt-lettered on the spines, top edges gilt, Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Rarely found in a binding. Some minor rubbing. Label of Bernard Breslauer.
Item #223067
The most elaborate and comprehensive armorial and biographical dictionary of French armigerous book collectors down to the twentieth century (e.g. Lacroix-Laval), including some foreigners connected with French history and culture (e.g. Lord Stuart de Rothesay) and Frenchmen who became rulers, or their consorts, of foreign countries (Bourbon - Spain, Beradotte - Sweden); French sovereigns, princes of the blood, and their relatives, are separately treated (vols. 25-29). The work is an essential supplement to a French national biography. Of the 2,685 "planches," 141 reproduce unidentified arms, though some of these are identified in the preface to the Index, some others reproduce the arms of cities etc., the vast majority the various versions of coats-of-arms used on the bindings of their owners, whose succinct biographies are given in every case. Thus, the "planche" of J.A. de Thou reproduces his nine different armorial stamps, those of Marquis La Croix de Castries seventeen, of Louis XIV twenty-five, of Louis XV thirty-one, of Napoléon I nineteen. The title of the book, on the binding of which a particular version of the owner's arms is found, is given in full, together with its present or recent whereabouts. The work is arranged according to the fundamental heraldic configurations: bandes & barres (bends and bars), chevrons, croix (saltire), meubles (charges), and made accessible by an elaborate index volume.
