?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(NEW YORK--BUFFALO.) [Ball, Sheldon.] Buffalo in 1825, Containing Historical and Statistical Sketches. Folding map, frontispiece view of Buffalo. 13, [1] pages. 8vo, original plain wrappers, moderate dampstaining, title written faintly in color pencil; foxing, small hole in lower margin of final text leaf, water damage to map with loss of perhaps 5% of image area along right edge; modern bookplate on inner wrapper. In later library cloth slipcase, somewhat worn. Buffalo, NY, 1825
"The first history of Buffalo. . . . One of the most-to-be-prized Buffalo books"--Severance, page 560. The two plates are believed to be the first copper engravings ever produced in Buffalo. The author's son Gideon later reminisced about the crude frontier methods used in the production of the plates. Ball was an amateur artist who thought he would try his hand at engraving a copper plate to accompany his pamphlet. When he was done, he learned that the copper plates could not be used on newspaper presses then available in Buffalo, so a special improvised press had to be constructed with buttonwood rollers. Still the results were unsatisfactory, and further research determined that a special copper-plate ink was needed rather than standard newspaper ink. A recipe was procured and the ink concocted just for the occasion. See Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, Volume I, page 152. Only one copy known at auction since 1922, in the 1967 Streeter sale, II:906 ("one of the rarest Buffalo imprints"). Sabin 9052.
![(NEW YORK--BUFFALO.) [Ball, Sheldon.] Buffalo in 1825, Containing Historical and Statistical Sketches.](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//315\678315.jpg)
![(NEW YORK--BUFFALO.) [Ball, Sheldon.] Buffalo in 1825, Containing Historical and Statistical Sketches.](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//315\678315_view 02_02.jpg)
![(NEW YORK--BUFFALO.) [Ball, Sheldon.] Buffalo in 1825, Containing Historical and Statistical Sketches.](/Content/images/image-placeholder.png)
![(NEW YORK--BUFFALO.) [Ball, Sheldon.] Buffalo in 1825, Containing Historical and Statistical Sketches.](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/thumb//\315\678315tn.jpg)
![(NEW YORK--BUFFALO.) [Ball, Sheldon.] Buffalo in 1825, Containing Historical and Statistical Sketches.](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/thumb//\315\678315_view 02_02tn.jpg)