?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
WIRSING, ADAM LUDWIG. Marmora et adfines aliquos lapides coloribus suis . . . A Representation of Different Sort of Marble, Ingraved and set out in their Natural Colours. 98 (of 101) meticulously hand-colored engraved plates depicting 559 varieties of ornamental marble and stone; lacking the frontispiece and 2 plates in the supplementary section at the end. [66] (of [67]?) leaves of letterpress, including titles, preface leaves, and text in Latin, Dutch, German, English, and French. 4to, approximately 305x245 mm, early 19th-century 1/4 sheep, worn, covers almost detached, contents loose in binding; large smudged ink blot in upper right corner of plate 1, partly affecting image, minor marginal stains on a few other plates. Amsterdam: Jan Christian Sepp, 1776
Second edition of a profusely illustrated catalogue of varieties of ornamental marble, substantially enlarged to include European specimens from outside German-speaking regions, with multilingual text and nearly twice the number of plates as the Nuremberg original edition in Latin and German published the year before. "Unlike the present day meaning, the word marble during the late eighteenth century referred to any stone that could be cut and polished for decorative purposes . . . The spectrum of colors and patterns inherent in natural rock is accurately reflected in the fine hand-colored plates, which exhibit an extraordinary range of patterns of color in their figures. The specimens are classified according to the locality from which they originated and numerically keyed to the text" (Schuh). The Amsterdam edition was originally issued in parts; bound copies vary in the number of plates and text leaves present and are seldom found as nearly complete as the one offered here. Landwehr, Studies in Dutch Books with Coloured Plates 1; Schuh, Wirsing 2; Sinkankas 7282.
