{"title":"Coming Soon","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"anonymous-la-grande-danse-macabre-1728","title":"La grande danse macabre","description":"\u003cp\u003e1728\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 4to. Pp. [1] f.e., 1-76, [1] r.e.\u003cbr\u003e\nTroyes\u003cbr\u003e\nJean-Antoine Garnier\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eContemporary marbled boards, rubbed; spine worn and cracked, but sound, with small losses at the head and foot and an early paper shelf label, \"197.\" Mounted heraldic bookplate on the front pastedown, identifiable through heraldic research as that of the von Neindorff family, an old Saxon noble house and hereditary cupbearers to the Dukes of Brunswick, bearing the characteristic zigzag bend and stag with the motto trew ist wildbrat (\"loyalty is as rare and prized as game\"). Characteristic browning and foxing throughout on the inexpensive papier à chandelle typical of Bibliothèque bleue publications, with occasional soiling, light marginal wear, and a few small marginal chips. The lower margin has been trimmed very close to the text, occasionally affecting signatures but never the printed text itself. A sound, attractive copy of an intrinsically fragile popular production. Fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA popular eighteenth-century Troyes edition of one of the most influential illustrated books of the late Middle Ages, preserving the Danse Macabre within the celebrated Bibliothèque bleue, the inexpensive chapbook tradition that carried classic texts to a mass readership throughout France. With provenance form the Library of a noble German family.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLa Danse Macabre (French) originated as late-medieval allegories expressing the universal fragility of life, while criticizing the rich and potent. Evolving from Black Death tragedies and sermons, the earliest artistic examples took the form of elaborate murals in the cemetery of the Church of the Holy Innocents in Paris. Similar paintings popped up across Europe, depicting personified Death leading a chain of people (from popes and kings to peasants and children) toward the grave. When the Paris murals began to decay, publisher Guyot Marchant copied the poetry and commissioned woodcut illustrations, publishing the first definitive printed version, La Danse Macabre in 1485.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe motif became one of Europe's enduring visual and literary allegories, reminding readers that death levels every distinction of rank, profession, age, and sex. By the eighteenth century, the work had entered the world of the Bibliothèque bleue: the inexpensive, woodcut-illustrated books printed principally at Troyes and distributed by itinerant colporteurs from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. In this new setting, a late medieval moral allegory became household reading, devotional literature, and popular picture book at once, its illustrations surviving through generations of reused and recut woodblocks.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe title page identifies Jean-Antoine Garnier, active as printer-bookseller at Troyes from 1766, while the privilege printed on p. 76 reproduces the royal privilege granted in 1728 to Pierre Garnier. This juxtaposition is entirely characteristic of the Bibliothèque bleue: privileges, woodcuts, and popular texts alike passed from one generation of the Garnier family to the next, and were routinely reprinted unchanged as editions continued to be issued throughout the eighteenth century. The privilege thus records the continuity of the Troyes press rather than the date of the present impression.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe title-page is adorned with a (so to say) lively woodcut of four skeleton musicians, immediately announcing the macabre pageant that follows. The volume is illustrated throughout with sixty woodcuts (some original and some reproduction of earlier editions), retaining much of the directness and expressive power of their medieval prototypes: animated skeletons seize popes and princes, monks and merchants, physicians, lawyers, lovers, and laborers alike, leading each inexorably into the universal dance. Following the author's prologue (\"Ô créature raisonnable... C'est la Danse des Machabées\"), each encounter unfolds as a dialogue in verse, Death first addressing its victim before receiving a reply, the paired texts printed beneath the corresponding woodcut. A second procession extends the dance to women, from queens and duchesses to brides, pregnant women, nuns, and young gentlewomen, reaffirming that beauty, youth, wealth, and rank offer no exemption from mortality. The accompanying illustrations are remarkably theatrical, juxtaposing the living and the dead with a stark economy of line that made the Danse Macabre one of the most enduring visual inventions of late medieval Europe. The volume concludes with several companion texts in the tradition of the ars moriendi, including La Mort menace l'humain lignage, the Exhortation de bien vivre et de bien mourir, and a concluding prayer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere's something deliciously fitting about this particular copy, as if its delightfully rock'n'roll skeletons weren't already enough to make us smile. This modest Bibliothèque bleue edition (printed cheaply for a mass readership) survives from the library of a noble German family. The book seems to have practiced exactly what it preached, paying little attention to social hierarchy: just as, in the Danse Macabre, kings and queens, merchants, bishops, beggars, and lovers all take Death's hand in turn, so too did this humble chapbook find its way into aristocratic hands - and now into ours.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49318587760875,"sku":null,"price":3200.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/00158_IMG_8664_1.jpg?v=1788120350"},{"product_id":"kern-eyn-new-kunstlichs-wolge-1530","title":"Eyn new Kunstlichs wolgegründts Visierbüchl","description":"\u003cp\u003e1531 First Edition\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn Folio. Leaves [1] f.e., [1], lvi, [1] folding woodcut plate, [1] r.e.\u003cbr\u003e\nStraßburg (Strasbourg)\u003cbr\u003e\nPeter Schöffer, bei Hansen Schwyntzern\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eModern olive brown morocco, richly gilt- and blind-tooled, spine with four raised bands. The upper margins are somewhat shorter than in an otherwise well-margined copy; in a couple of larger illustrations, the upper margins have been trimmed close to the upper edge, causing minor losses, due to the fact that the images were originally printed well beyond the normal text area. many other small and big woodcuts in the text. Later bookplate of Owen Gingerich on the front pastedown, with the motto \"Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei\" and the initial G enclosing a globe. Handwritten ownership note at the back of leaf lvi \"Alessandro Volpi\". A clean, fresh, and attractive copy of this rare work, with distinguished provenance. Fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of Kern's important illustrated German treatise on the practical art of gauging wine casks, a remarkable vernacular work bringing geometry directly into commerce and the wine trade. With provenance from the Library of Owen Gingerich.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCompleted on 1 April 1531, Kern himself announces its novelty on the title-page, claiming that it is never before printed or issued (dergleichen noch nie getruckt oder außgangen). A wine cask became a commercial object only after its capacity had been determined, and this Visierbuch (gauging book) addresses precisely the practical art by which an irregular barrel could be measured with a graduated Visierrute (gauging rod) and converted into local units of capacity. Written in Early New High German, with Latin mathematical headings, the work identifies its author in both the dedication and closing verses as Ulrich Kern von Freysing, Rechenmeyster und teutscher schreiber (Ulrich Kern of Freising, reckoning-master and German scribe). The dedication to the merchant Hans Volmar of Rottweil reveals the intended audience: merchants, coopers, and tax officials whose livelihood depended upon accurate measurement rather than abstract mathematics. Kern also acknowledges his teacher, Christoff Rudolff of Jauer, author of the first German algebra book and commonly credited with introducing the radical sign, placing the work firmly within the Rechenmeister (reckoning-master) tradition.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe printer's family name will not pass unnoticed by any scholar or lover of early printing. Peter Schöffer the Younger was the son of the celebrated Mainz printer Peter Schöffer the Elder, Gutenberg's apprentice and collaborator; he was also the grandson of Johann Fust, Gutenberg's primary financier. The younger Schöffer carried this remarkable printing dynasty into the Reformation era, working successively in Mainz, Worms, Strasbourg, Basel, and Venice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis volume was printed during Schöffer's Strasbourg partnership with Johann Schwintzer, at a moment when practical mathematical knowledge previously transmitted through local teaching and workshop practice was increasingly finding durable printed form. Kern's insistence on adapting the measuring rod to the different weights and measures of individual regions makes the book particularly revealing of the problem it sought to solve: applying a common geometrical method across a commercial world still governed by highly local systems of capacity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe large woodcut printer's device on the colophon leaf is notable in its own right. Signed with the monogram \"HG\" and traditionally attributed to Hans Baldung Grien, it is Schöffer's elaborate 1531 device, incorporating the family arms and flanked by shepherds and a richly dressed couple. Schöffer reused the block in later publications, including the \"Rerum musicorum opusculum\" printed with Matthias Apiarius in 1535.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe book opens with an illustrated title page: a woodcut depicts a cooper or wine gauger standing behind a large wooden cask, demonstrating the use of a gauging rod (Visierrute). Holding the long graduated rod horizontally across the barrel while taking a measurement with his right hand, he illustrates the practical operation at the heart of the Visierbuch: determining the capacity of a cask geometrically without filling it. The barrel is shown with pronounced staves and iron hoops, emphasizing its commercial rather than decorative function.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe following text is divided into three parts. The first explains the construction of gauging rods from geometrical principles, introducing square and cube roots through tables and diagrams. The second applies these methods to the differing systems of measurement used throughout the German lands, illustrating the geometrical constructions with numerous diagrams and a striking folding plate. The final section presents completed gauging rods for the principal regional measures, together with multiplication tables, worked examples, exchange calculations, and the printed rod scales used in practice. Throughout, the units are those of the barrel trade, including Fuder, Saum, Ohm, Eimer, Viertel, and Maß.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe volume is illustrated with numerous text diagrams, a large folding plate, and a handsome colophon woodcut. Particularly noteworthy is the use of red and black printing in the rod scales: the red rules form continuous measuring lines while the black dots mark the graduations, making color an essential functional element rather than decoration.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWine, geometry, and the dawn of printing, what's not to love? This ingenious little manual taught merchants how to measure a cask without ever filling it, transforming mathematics into an everyday tool of the wine trade. But we also fell for its printing pedigree: produced by Peter Schöffer the Younger, son of Gutenberg's apprentice and grandson of his financier, it leaves you only two degrees of separation from the invention of printing itself. Add handsome diagrams, clever red-and-black typography, and a delightful woodcut or two, and this is exactly the sort of book that makes our hearts skip a beat.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49353634250987,"sku":null,"price":3800.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/00152_IMG_8683_fc547ba9-8305-4965-9e9c-448d6ded079a.jpg?v=1788647044"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/collections\/00171_IMG_0437.jpg?v=1788993480","url":"https:\/\/fenicebooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/coming-soon.oembed","provider":"La Fenice Antiquaria","version":"1.0","type":"link"}