Tag Archive: 0engraving

Something a little seasonal: this mezzotint reproduces Bartolomé Esteban Murillo‘s Rest on the Flight into Egypt. It is the work of James Walker (1759–1822), who had been recruited to go to Russia in 1784, where he was appointed engraver to Catherine the Great.  ‘Walker’s principal task was to engrave important pictures by old and contemporary […]

I’ve been dipping into a book by Franz Reitinger called Die blaue Epoche: reduktive Farbigkeit im Rokoko (2016), which explores the fashion, between about 1730 and 1765, for printing mezzotints using blue ink. It wasn’t something I’d really been aware of before, but I have always found the colour, Prussian blue, quite captivating. I only […]

With the Boston book fair now behind me, I’ve now got time to focus on cataloguing some recent acquisitions and thought I’d share one with you. This is a rare eighteenth-century perspective view depicting a miniature contemporary library, complete with library users reading, discoursing, or simply admiring the shelves.  Such Guckkastendioramen (or ‘peepshows’ as they […]

I’m currently putting together a new list of 18th-century material, and thought I’d share one item from it here. It’s two etchings of the ‘walking bookseller’, Theodora Grahn, ‘Baron de Verdion’, from 1793 and 1803. These are two versions of the much-reproduced image of Theodora Grahn/de Verdion, an émigré cross-dressing bookseller in Georgian London.  The […]

As many will know, ephemera has been an interest of mine since I set up the business (ten years ago this year!). Recently, I discovered a genre of which I was previously unaware: fancy printed greetings cards from eighteenth-century Germany, using colour and silk. Here is a New Year’s card, the etching printed in blue, […]

Less than a month to go until Firsts: London’s Rare Book Fair, and we find ourselves busily putting together our fair list. This year we have a variety of material we hope you will enjoy, including one of my current favourites: a striking example of copperplate engraving…