?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(DESIGN / PRINTING / BANKING HISTORY / TRADE CATALOGUE.) Sharp, Grand The Gilbert Prize Essay on the Adaption of Recent Discoveries and Inventions in Science and Art to the Purposes of Banking. Third English (first illustrated) Edition. 90 plates and portraits relating to new advances in banking such as locks, safes, and mainly banknote production, with numerous specimens of printing, paper, and engraving, on variously colored sheets, with a set of 15 wax seals mounted to inside rear cover, lacks plate 13, but with the addition of 13 extra plates not listed in contents as well as the tipped-in note to the reader, often absent. Thick 8vo, original 1/2 green morocco gilt over marbled boards, moderate wear. London: Groombridge and Sons, 1854
A wonderful catalogue of innovations in commercial printing and design inspired by the recent advances displayed at the Industrial Exposition of 1851. That year, J. W. Gilbart, a director of the London and Westminster Bank, Royal Society Fellow, and Founder of the City of London Literary and Scientific Institution, offered a prize for the best essay on the topic of how the modern inventions shown at the Exposition could be adapted to the field of "practical banking." Sharp offered this compendium and this, its third edition, contained a profusion of samples. Each volume is unique as to the number and exact specimens included.
