CALLIGRAPHY Seddon John The Pen Mans Paradis both Pleasant

Sale 2176 - Lot 26

Price Realized: $ 1,140

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(CALLIGRAPHY.) Seddon, John. The Pen-Mans Paradis both Pleasant & Profitable; or, Examples of all ye usuall Hands of this Kingdome. 35 leaves comprising frontispiece portrait of Seddon after William Faithorne, title, dedication, and 32 plates after Seddon's virtuosic writing specimens, entirely engraved throughout; extraneous contemporary horizontal strips with engraved calligraphic alphabets mounted in upper and lower margins of most plates. Oblong folio, 210x378 mm, contemporary wrappers, heavily soiled and worn, covers detached, backstrip lacking; dampstaining on portrait, title, and last leaf, occasional soiling, portrait mounted on inside front cover and missing small piece from blank outer margin. [London]: John Sturt, [some plates dated 1695]

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first edition. During his lifetime the writing-master Seddon (d. 1700) "was much admired for a level of ornamental penmanship which was notable for its enormous flourishes produced with one continuous stroke of the pen . . . Seddon''s calligraphy was characterized by the unusually imaginative monsters and dragons with which he embellished his compositions" (ODNB). Bonacini 1673; Berlin 5047; Harvard/Becker 125; 2000 Years of Calligraphy 112; Wing S2357.